> Seems wild that they can code and deploy an update of a critical-seeming component in the field like that. I thought such a firmware update would need extensive QA in the lab, along with root causing why this bug slipped through their processes anyway.

These cars are in a perpetual Q&A state, they are getting modified between races. That's true for the "big teams", small teams don't have the resources, they're just "happy to be there". That's why it's possible to see stories like Brawn GP[^1]. That's what makes the sport fascinating, because the overtakes are not as much as one would hope for a ~2-3 hours race. But every little thing counts. In the last race 1st and 2nd had ~103ms diff or something like that for example, which is something that didn't happen for 15-20 years (maybe more).

[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd3miTpvUmI

> That's true for the "big teams", small teams don't have the resources, they're just "happy to be there".

This isn't really the case anymore. There's a budget cap, and all of the teams are financially sound most of the time. While the poorer teams might bring fewer upgrades in a year, they still bring upgrades all year long, and R&D is a continuous process in every F1 factory these days. Smaller teams also get additional R&D, compute, and testing time compared to the big teams.

Actually there is a budget cap so small teams have the same resources of big teams. However big teams have an advantage. They assembled a better team and a better network. This is from the team principal of Williams, one of the teams at the bottom of the rankings https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/cost-cap-creating-two-tie...