These are hectic days at home Red Bull. The Milton Keynes team passed in the space of a few hours from the joy for the second consecutive drivers’ title won by Max Verstappen to the anger for the official press release issued by the FIA which certifies a double violation of the Austrian team within the budget cap: procedural infringement isminor breaches‘. For the second item, which explains how the team headed by Christian Horner exceeded the spending ceiling in the 2021 season – albeit by less than 5% – sports penalties are also potentially envisaged. Red Bull, for its part, responded to the Federation in a polite but very decisive manner, firmly reiterating that it is fully compliant with the limit set at 145 million dollars.
In the meantime, however, on the web, which never forgets anything, words written directly from the fist of Christian Horner began to circulate on 11 May 2020, when the Circus and the entire planet were still in check by Covid-19 and the the end of the lockdown was still a long way off. In those difficult months, in which the world of Formula 1 was still not even sure of being able to compete in the championship that would then begin in July, there was already discussion of budget cap and spending limits to be respected in a mandatory manner with the main objective of reducing the costs of the teams and – above all – of reducing the competitive gap between more and less wealthy teams. In this context, the number one of the Red Bull wall highlighted – in an editorial published on the official Red Bull website and still available – how the budget cap did not center the point of the problem.
“Money is a hot topic among F1 teams right now – wrote Horner in his analysis – the problem is that there is so much talk about the cost ceiling figure that I think we are losing sight of the point. F1 teams will always spend the budget they have available. Plus an extra 10%. It is impossible to compare the expenses of Ferrari with those of Haas, of Mercedes with those of Racing Point or even of Red Bull with those of AlphaTauri. These are completely different structures and business models. I think the solution should be to consider what drives up the costs, that is the research and development costs to build and develop the cars in the hope of being competitive “.
The phrase that catches the eye is obviously the 10% ‘more’ that the top teams would spend anyway. A comment that, unfortunately for Horner, has backfired on his own team, at least right now. It remains to be understood which path Red Bull will choose to take in the coming weeks: that of the plea bargain with the Federation or that of the wall against wall, risky, however, due to the possible consequences in terms of sanctions.
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