Are Red Bull happy for Perez to keep them 3rd or less in F1 constructors table?

[John S]

Are the team from Milton Keynes more than happy for Perez to continue with his low points finishes to ensure they get more Wind Tunnel time for the critical new regs season of 26? Could explain why they have not moved to side-line him.

Might Christian, who we are told is at odds with Marko over 2nd seat alongside Max next year, also be prepared to keep Perez in for 25 season to achieve a similar objective heading into 26?

Fred Vasseur over at Ferrari is convinced some teams will be looking to game the system by scoring lower to gain development time in the tunnel.

I guess if you don't need the bonus money handed out by FOM/Liberty for placings in the constructors table finishing order it's pretty tempting to try to gain tunnel time.

Ferrari's Vasseur wouldn’t be surprised if some teams adopted a “we don’t care” attitude to next season’s positions in the Constructors’ Championship as the lower they finish, the more of a head start they’ll get for 2026.

“It’s not critical in this period if someone has an advantage and is given more [wind tunnel] runs,” said the Ferrari team principal as per Autosport. “That is because today we are making such small progress each run.

“But the game changer could be ’26 because you could have some teams that are perhaps not fighting for the championship next year that decide: ‘Okay, for ’25 we don’t care if we are Px [in the standings] and we don’t care if we are x plus two or x minus two. We will just go full on the ’26 project.

“If you are fighting for something, you will have the temptation to do more for ’25 plus, [and] on the top [of that], the other teams already have more, because they are Px compared to P1 in the table. So the Px will be fully focused on ’26 but the P1 will be split [across the two seasons].”

Formula 1’s ATR scale, which lays out the number of wind tunnel runs and CFD hours every team is permitted, is reset twice a year based on the Constructors’ Championship.

The first cycle from January 1 to June 30 is set out by the previous year’s finishing position in the teams’ standings, while the second cycle, July 1 to December 31, is determined by the standings on June 30.

As things stand today, McLaren will go into the 2025 season with the least number of ATR hours at 70 per cent of the allocation while Sauber will have the most, 115 per cent.

Extract taken from longer piece by Michelle Foster on Planetf1.com, 13th Nov 24.

[Jericoke]

I often compare F1 with American sports leagues.  I appreciate efforts to help weaker teams gain an advantage.  Honestly, if F1 wants to keep the sport competitive, paying the successful teams with deep pockets more than the struggling teams seems like a weird decision.  The wind tunnel time certainly helps though.

If we find out that teams are gaming the system though, while it's 'legal' it's a bad look for the sport.  Maybe the WCC and WDC both need to be considered.  Also with American sports, the bottom team doesn't automatically get the benefits, but rather they are put into a lottery, where the worse you are, the better our odds.  If finishing third doesn't guarantee more wind tunnel time, RBR might think twice about taking the risk.