Mercedes boss slams former team's rivals for 'jumping on the bandwagon' of increasing CapEx over a season

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff recently slammed his former team Williams' rivals for jumping on the bandwagon of the debate around increasing Capital expenditure. The Grove-based squad was the first home for Wolff as a shareholder before he moved to the German team and led an eight-year dominant run.

Williams has been one team that has been suffering from a complete lack of investment in infrastructure in the last 20 years. Ever since the former Mercedes director James Vowles took over the team in Grove, he has advocated for an increase in infrastructure.

In the recent F1 commission meeting, this was put forward and got canceled because multiple teams wanted an increase in capital expenditure over a season in order to catch up to the top teams.

Talking about why the whole thing got scrapped, the Mercedes boss explained that with multiple teams jumping on the bandwagon it would mean extensive changes to the already set regulations. As quoted by PlanetF1.com, Toto Wolff said:

“Why the CapEx discussion came up is that a team, Williams, said their infrastructure is sub-par and they wouldn’t be able to catch up with trivial things like machine equipment, and simulators, although simulators are less trivial things, but up to technical things like simulators."

"That was the starting point of all discussions," he added. "Then, as a consequence, some teams jumped on that bandwagon and said ‘Well actually, we would like to have a little bit more CapEx’. And that number went up from $50 million to $60 million, $70 million, $90 million, and suddenly, it was like free reign, and ‘Why don’t we change the CapEx levels?’ But there is no reason to do that, it’s $36 million."

---

Why the former Mercedes director is advocating an increase in CapEx levels?

As quoted by PlanetF1, former Mercedes director and now Williams team principal, James Vowles, explained how the team was so far behind in terms of infrastructure. He said:

“There are some elements that are 20 years out of date, which makes sense if you think through the history of this team. The investment it had was zero for around about 20 years and then an investment firm came through."

He added:

"Fundamentally, we’re in a situation where a lot of facilities were almost preserved from where they were 20 years ago. Composites is behind what I knew when I first joined the sport with a different team 20 years ago…”

This is an interesting debate because it's not only Williams but teams like Haas and Alfa Romeo would also be hoping to bring serious infrastructure improvements. The next F1 commission will have a lot of eyeballs on it if something like this does end up happening.