Many teams’ cars suffer from a bit of excess weight this year, which inevitably affects speed. Red Bull Racing has taken drastic measures and created a new lightweight monocoque that has yet to pass all mandatory FIA crash tests.
The new generation of cars weighs 46 kg more than their predecessors, mainly due to stricter safety requirements, but the tires and wheels are also noticeably heavier. The minimum weight of cars in 2022 has been set at 798 kg, but at the start of the season nine out of ten teams had heavier cars.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, only the Alfa Romeo C42 weighed less than this limit and the Swiss team had to add ballast. All the other teams tried to reduce the weight of cars in some way – Aston Martin and Williams, for example, succeeded when they switched to updated chassis versions.
According to rumors discussed in the Hungaroring paddock, the Mercedes car exceeds the minimum level by 8 kg, Red Bull by 7, Haas and McLaren by 3, Alpine by two. Nothing is known about the chassis of Ferrari and AlphaTauri.
But Red Bull believes the Ferrari F1-75 is fairly close to the minimum weight limit and believes this alone will make it 0.2-0.3 seconds faster per lap. Therefore, regardless of the cost, Milton Keynes decided to build a lightweight version of the monocoque. But the project will not only involve additional expenditures in manpower and resources: this chassis has yet to pass the full range of mandatory FIA crash tests and all static load tests.
According to the German edition, another team is preparing for such tests, and this is not Mercedes.
“It would be too expensive, and not just because of the crash tests. Three new chassis would have to be built, which would have cost an extra two million,” explains an unnamed Brackley team member.
Indeed, with such a high surcharge, it will be difficult for Red Bull Racing to meet the budget cap, and it is not surprising that the leaders of this team spoke from the start of the season about the need to increase this cap, citing to high inflation rates. As a result, the FIA made certain concessions, especially as many teams insisted on this.
Source: F1 News
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