On Monday, the FIA will issue certificates of compliance to all the teams in Formula 1 and Toto Wolff, the team principal of Mercedes, has stated that it is absolutely feasible that the budget cap scandal will eventually be resolved in court.
Last year, the FIA implemented financial regulations that forbade the teams from investing more than $145 million in the development of their cars for this year in order to comply with the new technical regulations.
All teams are expected by the governing body to maintain a record of their activities and submit their files for evaluation by a specific deadline. However, Red Bull and Aston Martin may be subject to harsher penalties after it has come to light that Williams missed that deadline and received a fine for a procedural breach.
According to a report in the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, those two teams went beyond their allotted spending limit during the previous season, the latter by as much as a whopping $10 million.
There may be ramifications for this, including disqualification from that particular championship season and therefore, there is a slight possibility that Max Verstappen might lose his championship title to Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The Austrian based-team, according to more recent indicators, did not exceed the five percent threshold; hence, if proven guilty, they would only face one of the minor penalties. No evidence of misconduct by anyone has been found thus far, but if any is discovered, the governing board will need to decide what action to take.
Following the FIA’s judgement being postponed until the next week, Hamilton demanded transparency before the Japanese Grand Prix. Depending on the outcome of any arbitration, this might take some time.
Wolff then said: “If it doesn’t come to the settlement agreement, because either the team doesn’t want to do it, or the FIA thinks it needs to go to the Cost Cap Adjudication Panel, then there is a group of judges, independent judges, that are going to look at the regulations and the case and come to a conclusion whether they should be penalized or not,”
“If the team is not happy with the outcome, then you can still go to the ICA and appeal there, so it’s a lengthy process, but I think super robust in terms of the governance.”
The Austrian has confidence that Mohammed ben Sulayem and his team would approach the matter with proper assiduity.
Wolff added: “I have zero doubt that this is going to be handled in the right way and transparent – contrary to what we had in the past sometimes,”
“Independent lawyers, maybe also judges, but people that have no involvement in Formula One, people that have been brought forward as top in their league.”
On Thursday, Hamilton said that he might have won the championship if Mercedes had spent an additional $300,000.
