Red Bull won’t apologise for budget cap breach

MEXICO CITY — Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes his team is owed an apology for the way it was treated following its breach of last year’s budget cap, but said he would “begrudgingly” accept the penalty issued by the FIA.

Red Bull was fined $7 million and faces a 10% reduction in its aerodynamic testing allowance for the next 12 months after the FIA found it exceeded the $145 million budget cap by 1.6%.

The verdict considered a tax credit that was not included by Red Bull as part of its accounts submission but would have reduced its overspend to just 0.37% had it been factored in.

In accepting the FIA’s penalty as part of an accepted breach agreement (ABA), Red Bull acknowledged it had broken the sport’s financial regulations and waived its right to appeal the penalty.

However, when asked if he thought his team should apologise for its breach of the budget cap, Horner turned the question on its head and said it was owed an apology.

“To be honest with you I think we’re probably due an apology from some of our rivals for some of the claims they have made,” Horner said. “We make no apology for the way that we’ve performed, the way that we’ve acted.

“We do take on the chin that there are lessons to be learned and potentially mistakes have been made in our submission, which with the benefit of hindsight with 20:20 vision everybody can be a specialist, but there was no intent. There was nothing dishonest and there was certainly no cheating involved, which has been alleged in certain areas. So I don’t feel like we need to apologize.

“We’ve taken our pounding in public, we’ve taken a very public pounding through the accusations that have been made by other teams, we’ve had our drivers booed at circuits, and the reputational damage that has been made by allegations has been significant. The time is now for that to stop and to move on.”

Horner said his team entered the ABA because it didn’t want the issue to be dragged out for months in appeal tribunals.

“Had we dragged it out through the administration process to go to effectively appeal, that could take months and beyond that the appeal could have taken further months,” he said. “So we could have been looking at 12-month period to have this situation closed and the amount of speculation, commenting and sniping going on in the paddock, it was in everyone’s interest — our interest, the FIA’s interest and Formula One’s interest — to say we close the book and we close the book here and today. We accept…