Breaking: FIA levies a whopping $7 million penalty on Red Bull for exceeding cost cap in 2021
Follow Us
The verdict is finally in for the one issue that had been going around in the minds of all the F1 fans, pundits, and the other personnel associated with the sport. The FIA have indeed announced the penalty that Red Bull will be facing for their minor breach of the cost cap, as was clarified during a press conference held by the authoritative committee of Formula One a few weeks ago.
It all started almost a month ago when the FIA announced that the 2021 expenditure audits will be performed by them to check if any of the F1 teams had crossed the cost ceiling which was set at $145 million. And then there was quite some controversy regarding the fact that two news outlets–one Italian, and another one German–broke the news of Red Bull’s cost cap breach way before the FIA officially confirmed it. Ralf Schumacher commented that Mercedes and Ferrari might be behind the news leak regarding the cost cap.
Over the last few weeks, the cost cap breach has been the talk of the town, and it has all come down to today, when the FIA announced a $7 million dollar penalty for the offending team–Red Bull. Although they had previously maintained that they never exceeded the expenditure limits for development of their car, the FIA held them accountable for a breach of $2.2 million.
Red Bull to get reduced wind tunnel time as an added penalty besides the $7 million fine for cost cap breach
In the light of the recent events, Red Bull had reportedly sat down with the FIA to come to an Accepted Breach Agreement (ABA). While many fans and even F1 pundits had feared that Max Verstappen‘s 2021 World Championship title would be taken away as a punishment for the breach, nothing of that sort was finalized in the end. According to the FIA, Red Bull’s overspend amounted to 1.6%, but it would have been under 0.4% had the team filed for taxes in a correct manner.
BREAKING: Red Bull gets $7m fine and 10% reduction in car development time for budget cap breach.
Breach was £1,864,000 ($2.2m) or 1.6%, but FIA acknowledged if a tax credit had been correctly applied would have been £432,652 ($0.5m), or 0.37%#F1
— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) October 28, 2022
Many have been asking if this $7m fine will be included in the team expenditure of Red Bull for this season, and the answer is no. So, this is excluded from the cost cap for Red Bull for this year. Additionally, Red Bull will also get reduced wind tunnel time (by 10%) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) time over the next 12 months.
This year, Red Bull had gotten 70% of the current limit (40 runs per week) for the wind tunnel time and the CFD time as teams like Williams got a bigger percentage of time, in an attempt to give a level playing field to the teams at the bottom of the Championship table. As per the penalty, Christian Horner‘s team will get 63% of the maximum permissible wind tunnel time over the next 10 months.
Coming to the financial side, Red Bull’s breach of the cost cap was calculated in Pound Sterling, and the FIA found them to have gone over the ceiling by £1,864,000 ($2.2m), or 1.6%, which is a minor overspend breach. The authorities found 13 areas where Red Bull could have corrected their expenditure, which include catering costs, sick pay, price of unused parts, etc.
The FIA also noted that Red Bull’s $2.2 million breach would have gone down by a few thousand bucks, had they applied for the correct tax return.
Read More: WATCH: George Russell spotted with his gorgeous girlfriend courtside enjoying a Miami Heat game
Read More: Sebastian Vettel to not appear on F1 TV shows: “I’m not going to be a TV pundit.”
Stay Updated!
Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)