The news of the day has arrived. The FIA and Red Bull have announced that they have reached an agreement on the budget cap issue. As is known, the Federation had communicated that Red Bull did not comply with the 2021 budget cap, exceeding the maximum spending limit of 145 million dollars. According to the FIA, However, Red Bull did not exceed 5% of that budget, spending an extra $2,2 million. Christian horner expressed himself in a lengthy examination of the case and of the motivations which led them to accept the FIA sanction.
FIA sanctions are coming
After quite a while negotiation, came in the afternoon (Mexican morning) the official announcement that sanctioned the agreement between the FIA and the Milton Keynes team. As specified by Federation, in the Accepted Breach Agreement(ABA) found with Red Bull, the Austrian team will have to pay a fine of 7 million dollars and suffer a 10% reduction in the development time of the car.
Horner: "The FIA didn't tell us anything in June"
At the end of this news, the Red Bull team principal Christian Horner who expressed himself on the matter. The first issue concerned the process to arrive at the sanction. “In June the FIA went through the books and told us nothing"- Homer began. “We received the first indications in early September. We have been asked for clarification on preliminary evaluations. We replied on the 13 points that had been indicated to us and we thought we had given the requested information. When we arrived in Singapore we were surprised and shocked to hear all the insinuations. We don't know where the figures that the other teams have come from. We have been extremely open with the FIA and we thought we had responded. Obviously we are in the first year of this process. It was new for us and for them. We expected to go through a review process".
The cold shower
The moment of communication of the violation, Horner lived it like this: "On 9th October, 90 minutes after Verstappen had won the Drivers' Championship at Suzuka, I was informed that we were indeed in breach of the regulations by £1.8mAnd. We were surprised, we thought we answered all the points. At that point we were invited to join the ABA. We thought that this way the situation could be resolved quickly. We interacted with the administrative panel and shared views on various relevant topics. The FIA accepted that there were extenuating arguments.".
"We had paid too much tax inside the roof. We would have saved £1.4m related to taxes. As the FIA said in the press release the actual breach is just over £400. We are talking about a violation well below 1% of the Cap".
awareness of sanctions
The final decision has been postponed to this week due to the event that deeply touched Red Bull over the weekend in Austin or the death of founder Dietrich Mateschitz. “The discussion on sanctions went on and was only momentarily interrupted by the death of Mateschitz. At the beginning of this week we arrived at the definition of relevant sanctions, at a sporting and financial level. We're talking about $7 million, which is a huge amount of money, that we're going to have to pay within 30 days. Obviously then the draconian penalty is the sporting one. We talk about one 10% reduction on our ability to use the wind tunnel and our aerodynamic development tools. Let me say that the penalty received is huge. Something that can lead to half a second or a second of time loss and will mark the development of our car".
"By winning the constructors' championship we are victims of our own success. We already have a reduction foreseen by the regulation in fact of 5%. Overall, for the sake of clarity, we would have 15% less time in the wind tunnel than 2nd in the constructors' championship and 20% less than 3rd in the constructors' classification. This 10% will impact our ability to perform on the track next year".
Horner: "We will suffer in 2023"
“There was talk of catering costs. We thought they were excluded. To put it all into context: We were £3.7m short of the threshold when we submitted our paper. Catering at Red Bull has always been provided as a benefit to those who work with us. Free food and drinks have always been provided. We felt that it was a cost that could be excluded. The FIA had a different point of view".
Although the penalty was severe according to Horner, prolonging the discussions would not have led to a different result, but rather made the situation worse. "Why did we accept it? If we had dragged out the administrative process it could have taken months and, beyond that, the ICA could have taken another few months. It might have taken a period of 12 months to close the matter. Given the amount of speculation and sniping that has ensued, we felt it was in everyone's best interest to close the accounts. We accept the penalties. Reluctantly, but we accept them".
Source statements: Passion formula
