Red Bull, FIA in standoff over budget cap penalty

AUSTIN, Texas — Red Bull and motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, are negotiating the punishments for the team’s breach of Formula One’s 2021 budget cap.

Red Bull is believed to have overspent by around $1.8 million last year, which constitutes a “minor” breach of the financial regulations.

Red Bull is the only one of F1’s 10 teams to have overspent. Aston Martin faces a fine for making a procedural breach when it submitted its financial records.

ESPN understands the FIA has already offered Red Bull an accepted breach agreement (ABA) outlining a sporting penalty and financial fine.

There has been a standoff between the two parties in Austin so far. There were suggestions on Thursday that Red Bull was going to hold a press conference with team boss Christian Horner, but this was contingent on a meeting with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, which did not take place when Red Bull had hoped.

Horner and Ben Sulayem were seen walking into Red Bull’s hospitality unit together on Friday afternoon. The team has not been able to comment publicly on the situation without a penalty confirmed, which has been a further source of frustration given developments in news in the past two weeks.

McLaren boss Zak Brown wrote a letter, circulated this week, which said any breach of F1’s budget cap “constitutes cheating.”

Although early speculation was that Red Bull could see Max Verstappen lose his 2021 championship, it is clear that this has never been on the table.

Red Bull maintains that it did not intend to breach the regulations, pointing to a failure to claim an R&D tax rebate last year worth $1.4m, sick pay for one employee and catering costs for employees not covered by the cap being included.

Other teams maintain that they all managed to stick to the cap and had an open dialogue with the FIA about what was allowed within the cap throughout last year.

Highlighting how big a task the audits have been, Red Bull’s financial statement was a 75,000-line Excel spreadsheet.

The other option open to Red Bull would be to reject the ABA and take the case to the cost cap adjudication panel, though doing so may result in stricter sanctions if an appeal is unsuccessful.