Red Bull Racing and Aston Martin are both understood to have overspent last season, with the former believed to be a potentially more serious case of a “material breach”.
The penalty for such a spend – in excess of 5% of the 2021 cap limit – could extend to exclusion of the team concerned from last year’s world championship.
Vasseur is adamant that any financial transgression should be treated as seriously as a technical infringement.
“I think, from my point of view, the cost cap was crucial for F1,” Vasseur told Autosport.
“I know it was a great achievement to put it in place. But now that it’s in place, the most important thing is to police it. And for sure there is no room for flexibility.
“I think that we have to be very strict with this. You can be disqualified from a race for 0.9mm of front flap deflection, as we were two years ago. If you are 300g under the weight, you are excluded.
“And, on the other hand, if you can spend millions for updates for X races, it’s completely unfair. If something like this happened, for sure the FIA will have to take action.
“You have to understand that sometimes with €200,000 you can bring a big update. And if you overshoot the budget by this, it’s a couple of tenths for more than one race.”
Alpine boss Szafnauer believes teams should be “appropriately” punished
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer, who ran Aston Martin last year but left before its final budget numbers were submitted, agreed that overspending teams can reap significant benefits.
“At the margin, any spend above the margin is spent on performance,” Szafnauer told Autosport. “And once you start spending on performance where others don’t get a chance to, because they’ve actually stuck to the budget cap, that’s serious.
“And I think the FIA have to appropriately punish those who have gone over. You have to first understand how big the breach was, and then what an appropriate penalty is.”
Szafnauer stressed that Alpine had made big sacrifices to stay within the cap.
“The team here made some significant decisions on letting people go, not hiring other people, before the start of this year, based on last year’s spend,” he said.
“And that’s significant. And, once you let people go, it’s hard to get them back and attract the same people.
“And once you stop development, because you’re going to be over the budget cap, and you stop it so that you assure…
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