Formula 1 personnel will no longer be allowed to share office space with their team's non-F1 staff, nor work in open areas such as canteens, as part of a major FIA clampdown on teams potentially gaming cost cap rules.
In newly published regulations approved this week by the FIA's World Motor Sport Council, a series of draconian measures have been laid down for 2027 to stop teams exploiting F1's spending rules.
For years now there have been suspicions of teams benefitting by using non-F1 staff to help feed knowledge into their F1 racing operations without it counting within their cost cap allowance.
One suggestion was that this was being done through the use of F1 teams creating special projects divisions to work on technology outside of grand prix – such as yachts and cycling.
Most top teams have such entities within their organisations - Red Bull has Advanced Technologies, Mercedes has Applied Science, Aston Martin has Performance Technologies and Ferrari has most recently been producing a new Hypersail yacht. McLaren had Applied Science before it was sold to a private investment group.
While nothing was ever proved, suspicions were rife that staff in technology divisions like these could get paid outside the cost cap for working on non-F1 technologies, while in reality still being on tap to help feed improvements into the F1 racing side of things.
Over the years, the FIA has repeatedly tried to stamp out teams exploiting things this way.
In 2023, there was the famous TD45 document that meant any Intellectual Property that a technology division transferred to an F1 team had to be fully accounted for under the cost cap.
More recently, the FIA shut down the ability of teams to try to save costs by only allocating a share of a salary for staff who were in theory splitting time between an F1 team and a special projects division.
To stop teams being sneaky on this front and underplaying the work done on the racing side of things, the FIA ruled that any personnel who contributed anything to the F1 team had to have their full wages allocated within the cost cap.
However, this was still not enough for the FIA to be fully satisfied that teams are not still exploiting the use of non-F1 staff to help them.
So, for 2027, a new 12-page rules section of F1's Operation Regulations has been added to close off any exploitation and that is designed to be extremely difficult to get around.
The rules effectively impose strict segregation of both staff and IT systems for F1 and non-F1 activities.
Measures that teams now must take include physical division of factories into restricted areas where only F1 staff can enter and those where non-F1 personnel are allowed.
These areas have to be secured by mandatory electronic access, with full access logs kept for three years so they can be checked by the FIA. F1 staff and non-F1 staff will no longer be able to work from the same offices.
Areas of factories that may be used by both F1 staff and non-F1 staff, such as windtunnels, simulators or dynos, can be allocated as ‘Restricted Shared Areas'. However, they cannot be occupied by personnel from both groups at the same time and there must be no information crossover.
Spaces in factories that are commonly shared – such as canteens, corridors, wellbeing areas and parking - can continue to be used by both groups of staff but no one may do their core work from them.
Teams have also been told that they cannot use messaging systems, external drives, contractual arrangements nor redeployment tricks to try to get around the restrictions.
IT systems used by F1 and non F1 staff must also be totally segregated, so neither side can have access to the other.
In limited circumstances, knowledge can be passed from the F1 team to the non-F1 side of the business, but information is not allowed under any circumstances to flow the other way.
The movement of personnel within organisations will also be heavily restricted – with strict information lockdowns in place to ensure that knowledge is not passed to the F1 team.
Any non-F1 personnel being moved to the F1 side of things must undergo a three-month cooling off period where they do not undertake any F1 or non-F1 activities, and have no access to any restricted IT systems. Once employed by the F1 team their new contract must stipulate 12 months of exclusive F1-related work afterwards.
Any movement of staff off an F1 team to take a special projects role requires a new contract and all-new IT permissions, including a new email address that is in play at the end of the working day prior to them moving. There must also be a commitment for them to do only non-F1 work for 12 months afterwards. Even with those measures in play, their salary must still count for that year's cost cap.
The restrictions laid down on personnel moving between the F1 and non-F1 sides of an operation will stamp out any attempt by teams to shuffle staff around to maximise knowledge and keep salaries outside the cost cap.
The Race understands that the strictness of these new regulations met resistance from several teams, but the FIA was determined to push the changes through.
Sources close to the governing body believe that the scope of the regulations is such that some squads are going to have to change how they do things to fully comply with the demands.