The days of ultra-intense car development in Formula 1 are over.
That is the view of Ferrari’s sporting boss Laurent Mekies, who does however admit that the dawning of the 2022 rules this year will result in more upgrades than was seen during the covid-marred 2020 and 2021 seasons.
"It will not be like last year because, at least for us, there was almost zero," he is quoted by Spain’s Marca.
"But if you look at 2019 or 2018, I think we will see less than in those years. That’s when the big teams brought something new to every race.
"From our point of view, it will be difficult to have a large number of upgrades with the spending limits.
"The real difficulty is that everything will depends on the level of competitiveness of the others," Mekies explained.
"So if you have a big hiccup early in the season, you can spend some of your money on two or three upgrades. You need to fix it somehow, so you will take the new parts, throw the old ones in the trash, and that’s how you’ll fix it."