“We don’t want a Championship decided in law courts,” Christian Horner ‘fearful’ of breaching budget cap for 2022

Christian Horner the Red Bull team Principal has recently brought everybody’s attention to the Budget Constraints that have been put in place for the 2022 Formula One season.

Christian Horner feels that there are very good chances that teams could exceed the pre-set budget limits as everyone is getting closer to the cut-off number.

The budget cap for the current season is set at $140 million and Horner believes that given the rate of inflation, it is not going to be easy for teams to operate under the pre-set budget cap.

Horner has been raising his voice against the budget cap since March this year and his main argument is that the new restrictions were set before the start of the covid pandemic.

He believes the Covid era was not put into consideration when the decision regarding the budget was made and hence feels that it should be increased.

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Christian Horner on the problems with the budget cap

“The way you design your car is within your control, that is something that you, together with your group of designers, you create. You’re in control of your own destiny.”

“What we’re seeing in the world at the moment, we’re not in control of the inflationary costs that are affecting households around the world. In the UK, we’re seeing predicted inflation at 11 percent.”

“That’s a direct effect on staff, on raw materials, on electricity, on commodities, on supplied parts. I think it genuinely is a force majeure situation that the FIA needs to deal with.”

If a team does breach the limit then they could be hit with a penalty but Horner has said he does not want to see the “Championship decided in law courts, or in Paris in front of the FIA.”

“We’ve got six months of the year to address this, we need to act now,” he said.

“I think the top teams would have to get rid of circa two, three hundred people each, to get anywhere near addressing it. Is that right?“

“The problem is if the cost cap fails badly, it’ll be gone forever.”

“We need to find a solution to this issue. Nobody could have predicted this. We lowered the cost cap by $35m during the pandemic, and nobody could have predicted the issues that we’ve got.”

Christian Horner has laid everything on the table regarding the budget cap issue and it has to be said that Horner has made some very solid arguments given that there are still a decent number of races left in the 2022 F1 season, it is going to be interesting to see if the FIA comes into action or not.

The reactions regarding the budget cap are mixed at the moment in the paddock where some teams are in favor of increasing it while some are not. The budget cap saga is far from over and the way things are going, it seems this is going to drag along for some time in the future.

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