Alpine is waiting on the FIA potentially allowing additional capital expenditure under the F1 cost cap regulations to upgrade its Enstone base.

Teams are currently limited in what they can spend across a range of areas, beyond simple car development, under rules introduced two years ago.

A cap of around $155 million is in place this year with a facility to spend a portion of that on capital expenditure – though an exception has been made for the construction of a latest-specification wind tunnel.

Ahead of the cost cap’s introduction, some teams invested to ensure they were at the bleeding edge, with the likes of Aston Martin recently moving into a state-of-the-art new factory.

McLaren has also made significant investments with a new simulator and wind tunnel, which will come online in the coming weeks.

“What we’ve discussed is enhancing Enstone, and that’s happening,” said team principal Otmar Szafnauer.

“We’re in the midst of improving our manufacturing facilities; we’ve purchased a state-of-the-art simulator, there’s a building that that’s going in, there’s also human performance area that is being developed.

“Now we’re looking at other human simulation tools that we need, and once we get the go-ahead from the FIA to raise the capex part of the cost cap, in order to level the playing field, and we’ll be we’ll be adding those simulation tools.”

Under the regulations, as they stand, teams can invest around $36 million into capex projects across four years.

However, it’s argued that traps teams that previously did not have the capital to invest before the financial regulations came into force.

Formula 1 is currently in a strong financial position, evidenced by the investment Alpine has recently enjoyed, which valued the team at more than $900 million.

As a result, there is now an appetite and capacity, to invest, but regulations preclude that from happening in some areas.

To address that, discussions are ongoing between the teams and the FIA as to how that issue might be addressed and afford some of the teams which had historically struggled to get on par from an infrastructure standpoint.

“The FIA are now canvassing all the teams to see what a sensible level it is, but I think we need to open it up between $20, $30, $40 million of investment in order to level the playing field,” Szafnauer explained.

That change is designed to allow teams to spend outside the cost cap on infrastructure, such as expanded facilities, within a defined time period.

McLaren and Williams have already publicly offered their support for the change.

“McLaren is a team that has operated without infrastructure, or infrastructure at the same level as some top teams for a long time,” said Andrea Stella.

“This is the reason we have invested largely, to be able to have a new wind tunnel and a new simulator, a composite facility, even if actually these infrastructures haven’t seen the light yet.

“So we are sympathetic and understand the point,” he added.

“We are operating at the limit in terms of cost cap from a CapEx point of view, and actually, we would welcome a conversation about relaxing some of these limits because we would like to further invest.”