There could be talks with the top senior members within F1 teams to further delay the new regulations until 2023, according to Christian Horner.
Coronavirus has forced Formula 1 to postpone its first eight races for the current 2020 season, while the Australian and Monaco Grands Prix have been cancelled and without a date in this year’s reshuffle of the calendar.
As a result, all the teams unanimously agreed to postpone the new 2021 regulations, which was postponed to 2022. This to allow the teams to recover from an economic loss point of view that they will be suffering this year.
But now everything seems to indicate that the technical regulations to be introduced in 2022 could be postponed for another year.
Given the recent statements that Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing Team Principal, shared during an interview with BBC, in which he talks about a “new deal” that the teams have had with F1.
“We’re talking about pushing back a further year the new regulations because in my mind it would be totally irresponsible to have the burden of development costs in 2021,” said Horner.
“There seems to be reasonable agreement, but it needs ratifying by the FIA to push back those development costs into 2022 for introduction in the ’23 season.” He added.
The new regulations aim to have a fixed budget that is the same for all teams so that, there is a fairer and more entertaining competition for the public. Horner said he wants to postpone the new regulation for another year because of the economic impact that the coronavirus will bring to the teams. In this way, the new budget would be left as a ‘secondary objective’.
“The most important thing we need now is stability. Because the one thing we know is that whenever you introduce change you introduce cost, and stability right now and locking down as much of the car as possible is the most responsible way to drive those cost drivers down.”
“The cap is a ceiling. It is almost secondary as far as I’m concerned, it is reducing the cost in order to go racing, 60% of the chassis frozen for the next 18 months, that will have a dramatic effect on reducing the operational costs of a Grand Prix team, whether that be for Red Bull or Williams,” Horner said.
Following the postponement of the new regulations until 2022 – for now – the FIA announced that the teams will use the same chassis for this year in 2021. At the same time, the World Motor Sport Council declared that the teams will be banned from developing the new 2022 car during 2020.
