Originally Posted by ZCanadian

Keep in mind that the cost cap is $145 million this year.

in 2019, the top three teams combined spent a total of almost 10 times that!
Merc $484 million
Ferrari $463 million
RBR (not including Torro Rosso) $445 million

That's part of what has driven performance in the past.
Now, they are developing a whole new car and racing an extended season on not much more than what Williams spent two years ago (and if you recall, they basically did nothing with the car at all in 2019 and brought the same car out in 2020. Their results were indicative of that (lack of) investment. The other low spenders were Sauber, Toro Rosso (who would have benefitted from the RBR investment), and Haas.

I'm not sure that adding the cost cap is going to get us better cars. It will be more "sustainable" in that teams will be less likely to drop out under financial pressures. Perhaps the cap will also give us more evenly matched racing, but then so would turning it into a spec series. Formula 1 is so much better by NOT being one of those. Part of that is the innovation. That costs money.

I fear that the cap is going to do the opposite of what it was meant to do, and make the sport more boring. Expect the results at the outset of the season to be indicative of the whole year, as teams struggle with being able to bring in true improvements to the car. Engines are frozen too, and aero is limited in 2022. What was it I was saying about a spec series. This might just be the next worse thing.