Wolff sees opportunity for Mercedes after Red Bull penalty: 'Advantage for us'

Red Bull Racing is still serving the 2023 penalty for exceeding the budget cap in 2021. Toto Wolff thinks Mercedes could benefit from this, although the team boss also points to its own successes with less wind tunnel time.

Because Red Bull Racing exceeded its budget cap in 2021, it will be allowed to spend ten per cent less time in the wind tunnel than planned in 2023. As the championship frontrunner, Red Bull already gets the least amount of time (70 per cent of the total), but ten per cent will therefore be subtracted from that.

Penalty for Red Bull

When asked about the penalty for Red Bull Racing, Wolff replied the following at a press conference which included GPblog and others: ''I think they've done a very good job last year getting a car out there that is half a second quicker than anyone else. The lack of wind tunnel time is certainly not great for them. An advantage for us this season.''

Still, the Austrian does not think his team will suddenly catch up significantly with Max Verstappen's team. ''But if you have an efficient machine you can compensate for that, or large parts of it. Long-term good for us. But we have been in the situation, without the penalty, in the years before. We have won and had less wind tunnel time than anyone else in the last two seasons. It will bite them a bit, but if they are efficient as an organisation which they have already demonstrated, it's not going to be big,'' Wolff concluded.