Otmar Szafnauer says having a healthier budget is benefiting the Racing Point F1 Team, but the team does not have a blank cheque to do everything they want to do.
Racing Point head into the 2020 season in a much healthier financial position thanks to the investment put into the team by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, but despite this, Szafnauer, the Team Principal and CEO of the Silverstone-based team, feels the budget is still amongst the smallest on the grid.
The investments that have come have allowed Racing Point, who will become Aston Martin Racing in 2021, to develop their 2020 car in a way they were unable to do with its 2019 predecessor, meaning they go into the new campaign with a higher sense of optimism that they can improve on last years results and championship positions.
“We don’t have all the money in the world,” Szafnauer said to Motorsport.com. “We now have ample money such that we’re not held back by developments that we know are there but can’t afford to make – which is what we had before. When you are developing the car but you can’t make the parts, that’s a killer.
“So that’s the bit we have now, plus if there’s somebody we need to hire, we can go ahead and hire them whereas before we couldn’t
“We still have a budget, probably the smallest budget [in F1], but before we were just in survival mode. Now we don’t have that here, and that’s hugely beneficial to be able to plan and put on the car the developments that you know are available.”
