Toto Wolff has made clear that James Vowles call for changes to the cost cap would face a challenge from the likes of Mercedes.

The Briton believes that as it stands the cost cap is creating a two-tier grid rather than levelling the playing field as was the original intention.

While he admits the cap has brought financial stability, Vowles claims that it hasn't brought the teams closer together and has actually led to a wider rift between the top teams and the rest.

As a result, the Williams boss is suggesting a cost cap built on a sliding scale based on points scored.

Asked if he agreed, Toto Wolff was in no doubt.

"The reason the cost cap came in was in order to balance the performances between small teams and bigger teams," said the Austrian. "We had to actually quite dramatically restructure, whilst other teams were below the cap and they were able to hire. So, I think that was the main idea.

"Now, where the cost cap has taken us is that obviously we have profitable entities," he continued, "and that is, from a pure economic effect, nice.

"But it's also suppressing salaries," he added. "We were always an aspirational sport. We attracted the best talent from the best universities because of the possibilities you had in Formula 1. Now you can get someone into a Formula 1 team today on enthusiasm, but at a certain stage, when after five, six or seven years and you have a PhD, your salaries are still depressed versus a tech company or a hedge fund or investment banking, that becomes a problem.

"So, where we stand, I'd love to have a little bit more room in the cost cap for lower salaries, a bracket, rather than buying new front wings, but give the possibility of paying a little bit more and being attractive as a sport.

"Now, I'm not sure that many find this a good idea. Obviously, it also depends on the size of the team.

"I think we exchanged that is something we would like to do, but if you have the reality of the budget, a smaller team is not going to be happy about us having five million more in the cost cap to spend for PhDs. So that's the second point.

"The third point is that what James is alluding to is the CapEx allowance or the CapEx possibilities. Now, how the regs were changed was that rather than having this CapEx budget, your CapEx would go into operational costs, into OpEx. So, the consequence is the teams that spent a lot in the past on CapEx, like us, for example, have a huge amount of costs that we need to depreciate in the cost cap. The ones that haven't spent a lot obviously have much more possibility to spend on infrastructure or whatever you want to, what was CapEx before.

"So I have super sympathy with a team like Williams and with James, and he's super clever, but we just need to find the right balance of not undoing something that we actually consciously changed a year or two ago.

"It's a forward-moving discussion. Personally, I don't like the concept of adjustment based on some positions. BoP for me is like a red mist...

"We're having these tiny little adjustments on aero time, ATR, which is almost invisible to the spectator and hasn't been a big thing because it's really tiny. We have the catch-up mechanisms on the power units. If someone were to fall behind dramatically, then you get that opportunity, but it wasn't a leapfrogging mechanism.

"So, the job that the FIA have done in that respect I think is very good. They haven't allowed any politics to creep in, people making noises that they wanted to do or not. I think they handled that very well. So, do we really want another mechanism where you're being allowed to have more CapEx, OpEx based on your championship position? I'm not sure."

"I think we do a good job as a sport of reviewing financial regulations, sporting regulations, technical regulations," added Zak Brown. "And I think we all collectively work well together to always try and move forward.

"Sport is very complex. I think the biggest difference in racing teams are the people, the culture. I know we don't have the largest infrastructure in Formula 1. I don't think we have the second or third largest infrastructure in Formula 1. We've got a customer engine, all these things which you hear over the years you can't win a championship with, and we have. And I think that's because we're a really well-performing team of people.

"So always open-minded. I do think we made a step forward in combining the CapEx and the OpEx. So now you have a decision to make where to invest, just like you have a decision to make on what drivers you want to bring on board.

"It's complicated, always open-minded. But I think if you look last year, it was the closest grid in the history of Formula 1. And then when I was growing up racing, most of the time it was one or two teams winning. Now it's four. Fifth got a pole this year. So, I think the sport's extremely competitive as it is, but always open to any conversation."

"You are a good example," interjected Wolff. "McLaren is a very good example. A team that wasn't owned by a big mothership that had endless funding like some of us, but able to work yourself out of a situation that wasn't good, starting to win races two years ago and then finally winning a championship."

"Two," Brown corrected him.

"Sorry, two, of course," laughed Wolff.

"Yeah. So, good example," the Austrian continued. "And then when you look at the pecking order today, you have VCARB that is always there or thereabouts in the top 10, performing. You have Alpine, you've seen they made a big step forward, and then there are four of us bigger teams that, like Zak said, four of us have won races.

"So I think overall, as an organisation, and I know that James is carrying with him huge ballast with an old-school, old-style Formula 1 team with massive machine shops and lots of production and making it leaner and more efficient and convincing people that the structure in the future needs to be different is super difficult. But I don't think that the CapEx/OpEx is going to unleash much more potential, in my opinion, and not with an adjustment mechanism."

"I think both these guys had really good points," agreed Alan Permane, "especially Zak saying about how close things were last year. And that isn't by accident.

"I think that's linked to some of the things that Toto said about the aero rules, the wind tunnel rules, the ATR stuff. It just allows a little tweak. And of course, as you have longer regulation cycles, the teams close up and drivers close up, and I think that's definitely something we want.

"I don't think we would support a wholesale change to the cost cap rules to start being able to spend huge amounts more money because I think it's served us very well for the, I don't know how many years we're into it now, six years we're into it now. I think it's served Formula 1 very, very well.

"Maybe there are tweaks to do, for sure. But as Toto said, if you want to spend a whole lot of money on CapEx, you can. The mechanism's in there. So if James wants to go and spend $100 million on something, he can do that. You just pay it off over the X number of years. So, the mechanism is already there."

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