Entitled teams need to stop whinging when things don’t suit

Is there anything in life that says ‘entitled’ more than demanding the rules of the game are changed because you cannot get it right? Yet somehow it seems okay to fly that flag in Formula 1 this season.

Can’t reach the minimum weight, get the FIA to increase it. Can’t stay within the confines of the budget cap, call on the FIA to up it. And can’t stop your car bouncing, warn the FIA that Formula 1 simply cannot go on like this.

But here’s the point that all those teams calling for changes are missing. Not everyone is experiencing the same problems trying to stay within the rules, so why should your entitlement override their efforts? Simply put, it shouldn’t.

Already the FIA have given in once this season, increasing the minimum weight of the all-new 2022 cars by three kilograms. They did that even though some teams, Alfa Romeo most notably, had hit the mark.

Alfa Romeo team boss Fred Vasseur was baffled by the decision as he explained his technical team had compromised on what they wanted for the C42 in order to keep the weight down. That compromise is potentially costing them out on track.

Fast forward a few months and dissatisfaction with the budget cap became the hot topic with several teams, all within the top half of the field, complaining this year’s $140million just does not cut it.

Christian Horner went as far as to call recent and ongoing inflation “force majeure”, adding the FIA has a “duty of care” to the teams and their staff members to increase the cap.

Nothing like a bit of emotional blackmail added to the mix, with Toto Wolff basically saying Mercedes could not give their staff pay increases because of the cap.

“I don’t want to lift the ceiling just to have a cost cap ever increasing and basically outmanoeuvring the initial concept,” said Wolff. “But I want my people to be well paid, especially in such tough circumstances.”

But what he and the other teams crying for an increase know full well is not all the teams have the $140million, never mind $145m. The irony of the cap part being some teams now want the FIA to change the rules to cut out porpoising, a consequence of running ground-effect aerodynamics, the philosophy behind the all-new cars.

Not only would changing the technical rules come with an added cost – an increase that would hurt the smaller teams more than their bigger counterparts with their $140m-plus budgets – but not all the teams are suffering with it.

"It is a phenomenon we just cannot get our heads around." #F1https://t.co/NMOJLOjIe1 pic.twitter.com/tM2DYcWR83

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) June 12, 2022

The Alfa Romeo does not bounce, the Williams and McLaren (at least before Azerbaijan) neither, AlphaTauri and Alpine barely, even the Red Bull RB18 does not experience much porpoising. Those teams fixed the problem themselves and again it is potentially costing them in the results.

If the Mercedes drivers, and it must be said Carlos Sainz too, are sore from all the bouncing, surely it is up to their teams to find a solution and to make changes, not Formula 1 and not the FIA.

If your car is too heavy, introduce a less effective part that weighs less. If you do not have the funds within the cap to give your staff an increase, drop a planned upgrade and share that money among your people. And if your car is bouncing, raise the ride height.

These are all compromises, they will cost the teams out on track, but at the end of the day they are also solutions. Just not the solutions the entitled few want to hear.