FIA approves strict new 2027 rules to stop F1 cost cap exploitation

TL;DR: The FIA has approved strict new 2027 regulations that wall off Formula 1 teams from their parent companies’ non-F1 projects. The five new articles, grouped as Section F6, require physical and IT segregation, restricted factory areas, access logs kept for three years, and staff transfer rules, to stop teams routing F1 costs through sister companies outside the budget cap. Red Bull, Mercedes, Aston Martin and Ferrari are directly affected.

The cost cap has always had a weak spot, and everyone in the paddock knew where it was. A team could keep its F1 spending inside the limit while its sister company, the advanced-technologies arm, the applied-science division, the yacht project, did work that quietly fed back into the race team. The FIA has now moved to close that door. Its World Motor Sport Council approved a new 12-page section of the 2027 operational regulations, Section F6, containing five articles on physical and IT segregation between F1 and non-F1 activities, first detailed by The Race on October 21 and corroborated by racingnews365.

What do the new rules actually require?

Separation, enforced two ways. Physically, factories must create electronically controlled restricted areas, with access logs kept for three years so the FIA can check them. Wind tunnels, simulators and dynamometers, the expensive tools both sides want, become restricted shared areas: F1 staff and non-F1 staff cannot occupy them at the same time, and there must be no information crossover. Shared everyday spaces like canteens and corridors can still be used by both groups, but nobody may do core work from them.

Digitally, the wall runs one way. Knowledge can pass from the F1 team to a sister project in limited cases with approval and documentation, but never in reverse. The rules explicitly ban the workarounds teams might try: messaging apps, external drives, contractual arrangements and redeployments designed to move information across the line. IT systems on both sides must be totally segregated, and the FIA gets explicit powers for on-site inspections and forensic IT audits.

How strict are the staff transfer rules?

Stricter than anything the sport has tried before. Anyone moving from a non-F1 project to the F1 side faces a three-month cooling-off period with no F1 or non-F1 work and no access to restricted IT systems, then a new contract stipulating 12 months of exclusive F1-related work. Movement the other way requires a new contract, fresh IT permissions including a new email address activated by the end of the last working day, and a commitment to 12 months of non-F1 work only. Even with all of that, the salary still counts in that year’s cost cap. The message is plain: you cannot hire an engineer on the yacht project’s payroll and have them design race-car parts.

Which teams are hit hardest?

The rules land on the teams with the biggest side operations. Red Bull Advanced Technologies, Mercedes Applied Science and Aston Martin Performance Technologies are all named in the reporting, along with Ferrari’s Hypersail yacht project. McLaren is the exception that proves the rule: it sold its Applied Science arm to a private investment group, so the new wall barely touches it. The Race reports, citing sources close to the governing body, that several teams resisted how strict the measures are, but the FIA pushed them through anyway, convinced that some squads will have to change how their factories work to comply. Technical disputes with the governing body have a history of escalating, as the desk saw when an FIA technical fight spilled into a patent lawsuit at the US Grand Prix.

Why did the earlier rules not work?

Because every fix left the door where the people are. In 2023, technical directive TD45 required intellectual-property transfers between related companies to be fully accounted for in the cap. Then the FIA banned the pro-rata salary split that let teams divide an employee’s cost between entities, and then came the full-wage rule: anyone contributing to the F1 team counts in full. What none of that solved was proximity, aerodynamicists and designers sitting in offices alongside non-F1 staff, officially working on other projects but easily able to offer input to the racing side. Section F6 is the next step in that sequence, from accounting rules to locked doors, access logs and cooling-off periods.

What happens now?

Teams reorganize before 2027. The new record-keeping duties start on January 1, 2027, and the practical effect is that affected squads must split buildings, IT systems and staff arrangements over the coming months. The human side of that is real: the staff being shuffled between entities are the engineers and mechanics whose pay structures this site broke down in its F1 pit crew salaries piece. Expect the first disputes to be about what counts as knowledge flowing in reverse, because that is where the grey area lives. The desk has covered how the FIA penalizes breaches before, and the pattern here is familiar: the teams with genuine standalone businesses, the ones whose side projects make real money, face the most painful restructuring. A token compliance exercise is possible for a small outfit. For Red Bull or Mercedes, splitting factories and IT systems is a serious operation.