Formula 1 does not want to see a repeat of last year’s long-running wrangle over teams’ compliance with the cost cap.
The series’ CEO Stefano Domenicali said yesterday he wants confirmation whether teams have adhered to the cost cap given “much earlier” than in 2022.
Red Bull and Aston Martin were found to have breached the budget cap regulations during the 2021 season, the first time they were imposed. However the penalties for those rules violations were not announced until late October last year. That coincided with Max Verstappen winning the drivers’ championship and Red Bull clinching the constructors’ title.
Domenicali said it is important the FIA concludes its assessment of teams’ finances earlier than it did last year. “For the credibility of the sport this kind of action, to check if everyone is respecting that rule, has to be done earlier than later,” he told Sky.
“So we are discussing, and this is on the FIA’s side to make sure that the control and the certification would be done much earlier. Because the effect on and if some teams will be out of it, has to be done in a proper way in as short a time as possible to be more credible.
“We see other sports that are taking the financial regulation with, in my opinion, too long time for a reaction and this is not good.”
Red Bull, who also took Verstappen to the drivers’ championship in 2021, were fined and given a reduction in their Aerodynamic Testing Restriction for exceeding the spending limit. The impact of Red Bull’s penalty on their performance “is a point on which I see there will be a lot of attention this year,” Domenicali admitted.
“I think that first of all, we don’t have to forget one thing that the step change of financial regulation in Formula 1 has been a step change in the governance of that sport,” he added. “And I was thinking that we could have even more problems to manage because the dimensions of the complexity, it is really huge.”
Domenicali said he hopes no team is found to have exceeded the cap last season, the second year it was in place. “I’m pretty sure that everyone understanding now what is the effect, if there is something not going well in that dimension, that is new,” he said. “So I totally agree that the focus on these actually would be very big.”
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2023 F1 season
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