In the first year of Formula 1’s budget cap, one team was found to have spent more money than they were allowed to. It was therefore up to the FIA to decide how they should be dealt with.
This was an incredibly important decision, as a lenient penalty would have risked making the budge cap meaningless. Did the FIA get the call right when Red Bull overspent in 2021?
The sport’s governing body found Red Bull spent £1.8 million more than the cap permitted, breaching the limit by 1.6%. This happened partly because it omitted some items which should have been included in its cost cap submission, and when they were added its spending exceeded the cost cap threshold.
For the combination of the procedural error in complying with the cap and the “minor” (less than 5%) overspend, the FIA could have chosen any combination of the following penalties: A fine, reprimand, deduction of 2021 constructor points, deduction of 2021 driver points, suspensions from stages of competitions (but not races), restrictions on aerodynamic testing or a reduction of the cost cap.
The FIA chose to fine Red Bull $7m (£6m) and cut their permitted aerodynamic testing time by 10%. Was that a fair penalty?
‘Correct’
Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer was among those who felt the FIA got the decision right given that Red Bull was only “marginally over” the spending limit. “I believe the punishment’s a good one, that the process was followed,” he said.
‘Harsh’
Unsurprisingly, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner felt his team was hard done by: “$7 million is an enormous amount of money,” he said, and the 10% cut in development time is “draconian.”
‘Lenient’
One critic of the FIA’s penalty was McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl. “The penalty clearly doesn’t fit the breach,” he said. “I just hope that moving forward we’ll have stricter penalties in place.”
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I say
I’ve always been sceptical that a budget cap could be enforced. The fact that one team out of 10 did not stick to it last year has obviously not changed that view. But it’s difficult to decide what I think is a fair punishment for a system I’m not convinced should exist in the first place.
The technical regulations work on the principle that if a team breaches them, they cannot defend themselves by claiming they did not gain an advantage. The penalty is typically exclusion. To my mind a budget cap should work in the same way: If…
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