Formula 1’s budget cap has reshaped the sport’s internal power structures, elevating the role of Chief Financial Officer to the same level of importance as Technical Director, according to Mattia Binotto.
The Audi Revolut F1 Team Principal argued that financial discipline has become as central to performance as engineering excellence in the cost cap era, a shift he said has changed not just processes but the culture of how teams operate.
Every component now carries a cost consideration alongside its performance value.
Scrap rates in development count directly against a team’s cap allocation, design decisions that would once have been driven purely by performance gain must now be filtered through a cost lens that did not exist a generation ago.
“The CFOs in the F1 team are as important as the technical directors, because you can somehow produce the best car only if you are spending properly your money,” Binotto, speaking at the Revolut Business & Audi Revolut F1 Team: The Engine of Ambition forum, said.
“In F1, in the past, we used to spend as much as the budget was allowing you. Today, you’ve got a cap and you need to respect it. So it’s a full transformation – culture, the way we approach it.”
The shift has driven a fundamental change in how teams approach design and development, with Binotto pointing to the concept of design-to-cost as a discipline F1 was largely unfamiliar with before the cap’s introduction.
“You can produce the same component with the same functionality by drawing a component that can be cheaper,” he said.
“In F1, we’re not used to it. Now, yes, you have to really be focused on making sure that it’s design to cost.
“On one side, you need to be cheap. On the other side, you need to be fast and you need to be the best. So that’s the biggest challenge.”
On one side, you need to be cheap. On the other side, you need to be fast and you need to be the best. So that’s the biggest challenge.
Mattia Binotto
For Audi, which is building its F1 operation from the ground up with a stated ambition to compete for a championship by 2030, that financial discipline is being embedded from the start.
A new campus is under construction, with Binotto clear-eyed about the timeline required to close the gap to the sport’s established frontrunners.
“2030 may seem very distant, but as a matter of fact, it’s tomorrow for our F1 team,” he said.
“We need more space, more internal manufacturing capacity, more engineering capacity. So it will take the time.”
