Seven upgrades in one update, for a single race. I looked at the list in the FIA document, published Thursday: seven parts on the RB22 for Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar at Baku. In the sim, I install all seven at once, restart, and gain four hundredths a lap. In real life, that took months in the wind tunnel. There are too many variables.
Team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed the package would not be followed by any further major upgrades this season. “We have now shifted the majority of our capacity to next year’s car,” he told RacingNews365. In the sim, changing cars is a click on another file. Over there, it’s apparently a decision you announce at a press conference.
Every team is doing the same, bound by the cost cap: they close one file to open another, 2027’s, where the regulations, they say, change almost nothing. That’s something my sim doesn’t model either: a budget. For me, development capacity is the time I have before bed.
Mekies says the team keeps two goals: the season’s first win, and learning for next year. In the sim, I’ve already won that race, several times. In real life, apparently, one is still missing. In theory, four hundredths should be enough.
It’s true, we checked: RacingNews365.
