Formula 1 has become 46 kilograms heavier in 2022. The minimum weight was increased from 752 to 798 kilograms and that’s a Formula 1 record. One would think that staying under the weight limit shouldn’t have been a problem for the teams, but in the end only one team made it: Alfa-Romeo-Sauber even has to weigh down its C42 with ballast in order to comply with the 798-kilogram limit. “Until now, we’ve always had the tendency to be reliable, but to start the season with too much weight. I don’t want that anymore,” explains Technical Director Jan Monchaux.
All the other cars in the field started the first races of the season heavily overweight. Red Bull and Mercedes are said to be 15 kilograms over the limit, Ferrari ten kilograms, McLaren and Haas five. Red Bull sports director Helmut Marko admits: “We can’t lose weight overnight, but only step by step. It will take longer for us to reach the limit.” Mercedes estimates that the goal will only be reached in the summer.
Six kilograms for full painting
In the past, the big teams would have set up a task force that would do everything possible to reduce the weight, separate from the normal development process. This is no longer possible in times of budget caps. Slimming needs to be part of the planned upgrades and go hand in hand with aerodynamic development. It’s also a culture change. Cars used to have room for improvement when it came to weight. So it didn’t matter if you gained a few grams with new parts.
Today we fight for every gram. It’s easiest to do this in places where it doesn’t cost any lap times. For example the paintwork. “A complete paint job weighs around six kilograms,” says Sauber team manager Beat Zehnder. That sounds like luxury to those who need to lose weight. “We didn’t paint parts of the sidepods and the rear wing to save 350 grams,” says Aston Martin technical director Andy Green.
According to AMuS, Red Bull had zero paintwork on the lower two wing elements after the Bahrain tests, Mercedes removed the black paint off the three flaps after the Barcelona tests. McLaren removed some of their orange paintwork too. Williams isn‘t using blue paintwork on the cockpit side. Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin both have black rear/front wings. Sponsor logos are glued onto the carbon fibre structure.
Leave a Reply