Red Bull was given financial and sporting penalties for exceeding the F1 cost cap threshold. Guenther Steiner has requested that the FIA impose a more severe penalty on Red Bull for violating the cost cap regulations for the previous campaign. The team principal of Haas claims that the present fine and penalty “doesn’t hurt” Red Bull as much as it ought to.
He has demanded that Red Bull and Christian Horner lose some of their cost-cap allocations for the upcoming season. Speaking with RTL, he said: “There are still opportunities to develop somewhere else, development hasn’t stopped.”
“It was just moved to a different area for the vehicle: you can work on the weight, you can do so much with the money. Seven million dollars is a lot of money. But it doesn’t hurt them.
“If you had said, for example: Next year you will have five million dollars less available than all other teams in the budget cap – I’ll name a number now, I don’t want to stick to it.”
- Mexico GP: Lewis Hamilton Admits The Jeering Crowd Had An Effect On Him.
- Fernando Alonso Lashes Out At The Media After Hamilton Posted A Cheeky Tweet Aimed At Him.
- Red Bull Cost Cap Punishment Is ‘Not Harsh Enough’ According To Andreas Seidl.
For the upcoming season, Red Bull will have a 10% decrease in the wind tunnel and CFD developments. The team additionally received a £6.4 million ($7 million) fine for exceeding its budget. It happened after it was discovered that Red Bull had exceeded the threshold by $2.2 million (£1.8 million).
If Red Bull had properly submitted their tax records, the FIA has admitted that this figure would have dropped to only £432,000 ($0.5 million). Steiner isn’t the only team principal to advocate for stricter sanctions and future cost cap decreases.
- Social Media Attacks ‘British Media Bias’ After Martin Brundle Defended Ted Kravitz’s Remarks.
- Christian Horner Feels That Max Verstappen Deserves Greater Recognition.
Laurent Mekies, the assistant team principal and race director of Ferrari, expressed concern that Red Bull would use the money they save from cutting back on wind tunnel time to improve other parts of the car. He said that the team would be “free to use that money elsewhere” for things like suspension development or weight loss.
However, the Accepted Breach Agreement (ABA) the team agreed to did not provide the FIA with the authority to lower Red Bull’s future cost cap. Mekies has cautioned that this is a “weakness” and has to be addressed for potential rule breakers.
He said: “It is not something that was available to the FIA if they were going down the route of the ABA. This is unfortunately one of the weaknesses of the regulations that they have written, and yes, I think it probably needs to be reviewed in the future.”
