Budget cap: Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, considers the sanction to be very severe
Christian Horner publicly addressed the media after the announcement of the sanction imposed by the FIA regarding the exceeding of the 2021 budget beyond what is allowed by the regulations. Horner deems this penalty to be very severe, but he wants to move on.
The facts have been proven: Red Bull exceeded the budget for the 2021 Formula 1 season by over 2.1 million euros (1.8 million pounds sterling). The FIA has imposed a record fine of 7 million euros on Red Bull for this overage, but more importantly, there is also a sporting penalty added to the financial sanction.
The sporting penalty will be carried over to future years and not to the past years where Red Bull won two driver titles and one constructor title. The penalty chosen by the FIA and accepted by Red Bull is a 10% reduction in wind tunnel and computer analysis time (Fluent mechanics) until the end of 2023. This corresponds to 63% of the allocated quota. As the reigning champion in 2022, Red Bull was entitled to 70% of the wind tunnel time. Each team has a 5% increase in wind tunnel time based on their position in the standings.
Severe sanctions by Judge Horner.
Christian Horner considers this sports sanction very severe: “We have been penalized with a significant financial and sporting penalty. 7 million dollars is huge, but the toughest part is the sporting penalty of reducing our wind tunnel activities and CFD analysis by 10%. This translates to between 0.25 and 0.5 seconds lost per lap compared to our competitors,” commented the director of Red Bull regarding the impact of this penalty.
We are going to have a 15% handicap compared to the 2nd place team in the championship and 20% compared to the 3rd place team. That’s huge, as I just said. This will have an impact on our ability to defend ourselves on the track.
Red Bull could have appealed but wants to move on.
Nevertheless, Horner wants to quickly turn the page and focus on the sporting plan from now on, explaining that since the regulations are new, there have been some hiccups in this first year: “We accept the fact that these regulations are still too young and that the FIA’s management inherited them from the previous administration. If we had decided to appeal, it would have taken months and we want to turn the page. It is in everyone’s interest to close this book and accept these penalties, reluctantly. Now it is time to move forward.”
