The FIA announced this Friday its sanction for Red Bull after proving that it exceeded the cost limit in the 2021 season. The Milton Keynes team has received a fine of 7 million dollars (7.04 million euros), in addition to a 10% reduction in time for aerodynamic and wind tunnel tests in the next 12 months. The federation has underlined in its report that the current world champions acted in “good faith” and that the punishment responds to a “minor infraction” of the budget ceiling, less than 5%.
And as expected, the decision has had very different interpretations. While the director of Red BullChristian Hornerhas described the sanction as “enormous and draconian”, his counterpart in Mercedes, toto wolffhas considered it “too light”.
“I’ve heard people say that the fine is a small amount. I can tell you now that it is huge, a huge amount of money. And as for the sporting impact, it represents between a quarter and a half second per lap, which has a direct effect on next year’s car and will be in force for a period of 12 months,” Horner lamented at a press conference at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome in Mexico.
The Briton specified that “by winning the constructors’ championship, we became victims of our own success, in addition to that 10%, having a 5% disadvantage compared to second and third place”. According to the aerodynamic development regulations, Red Bull will only have 63% of the use time in the wind tunnel compared to the team that finishes seventh in the championship, compared to 75% and 80% for Ferrari and Mercedes. Horner thinks the penalty will affect both the 2023 and 2024 cars.
“It will give our competitors an advantage, which is why they were pushing so hard for a draconian penalty. There were other sporting sanctions that were available to the FIA, but this one was highly requested by our rivals because they considered that it was the one that affected us the most. I’m sure that if they burned down our wind tunnel, it wouldn’t have been enough.” Homerwhich has ended with a message of hope for his team: “We are going to have to work incredibly hard in the time that we are going to have available, and we are going to have to be very efficient in the rounds that we decide to use the wind tunnel. But I have full confidence in the capacity we have”, he added.
Wolff, ruthless
“I think that in terms of the sanction, for us it is too light,” replied the director of Mercedes, Toto Wolff. “For them, it will be too much, of course. Any reduction in wind tunnel time is going to be detrimental. But how detrimental? It’s hard to judge right now. I think in absolute terms, $7 million is a lot of money. But maybe in the overall scheme for Red Bull, considering the investment they make in terms of the power unit and the team, it’s not.
wolff,In any case, he has been convinced that the FIA’s investigation and subsequent decision will serve as a deterrent to other teams considering not respecting the cost cap in the future. “I think the sum of the sanctions is dissuasive, the sporting sanction and, to a lesser extent, the economic fine. But the damage to the reputation that is taking place is probably the most important thing and no team will want to suffer that, because obviously, we live in a transparent and compliant world”.
According to motorsport.com, the Austrian manager has responded to Horner’s arguments relentlessly: “Nine teams complied with the regulations and stayed under the cap. This is a very small profit sport, and everything else is talk. No There is no mitigating factor.”
Marc Gené, in statements to DAZN, has given the Ferrari version, which also believes that the “insufficient” punishment since “10% of the use of the wind tunnel, which it can mean for them, is not proportional to the profit of 1.5 seconds that Red Bull was able to achieve by breaking the budget cap last year.