Yeah, and apparently they missed a tax break that would’ve made their over spend more in the territory of 400,000. Sounds like they need a new accountant.
My opinion on the penalty is that it needs to be stiff enough to deter future breaches… whatever that is. I don’t know. If next season a team wins the championship and overspends by 2 million and accepts a penalty for the following season. Then we have a problem.
This is exactly what Merc said. If the over spenders just get a fine they’ll add extra to their budget to cover the fine and spend what that want on the car
The only deterring factor is the aero time. We’ll see if that’s enough to deter others.
Heres the full spiel from the FIA.
The question is whether the fine should be paid from their 2023 budget. -7M and -10% windtunnel suits them right. 
The FIA need to publish each teams budget every month, not 1 year later or don’t declare a champion until a year later. 
It would another moving piece that would add interest to F1.
I believe its just a fine. No reduction in future year cost caps.
What I mean to say is that the fine should be paid by the team, and for example the parent RB company… Let’s say the budget for 2023 is 135M… Their budget would be 135-7 = 128M for 2023
Yep, I think we are agreeing that it should be as you describe.
But thats not what it is, the $7M is paid within 30days and is outside of the cost cap.
That’s a LOT of development money. 95% of money is just spent making the car, so when that extra $2m means they can nearly double their development over a season. That’s big.
It should be black and white here. This is huge cheating. Vettel had 2 ounces less fuel than he shouldve, and despite it having zero effect on his performance whatsoever, he was DQd. I’d expect to see harsher punishment from something as serious as a cap breach, which actually does have performance advantages
Well technically they overspent by 400k which is 0.3% of the total cap. 1.4 million if it was because Red Bull filed our some paper work wrong and missed the tax credit.
Toto didn’t seem too upset with the punishment so this seems like a minor overstep to me.
The 10% reduction in aero development time is a sneaky penalty though. That will haunt them from end of this year to end of next year.
During the development of the 2008 McLaren, they had a 300 document dossier of the Ferrari car. The FIA have a history of not taking the most draconian option, they just removed WCC points and issued a ‘big’ fine. Max Mosely spoke about the potential desire of banning the team entirely for 2008, such was the severity of the case, but had to take into account the effect that’d have on the team (i.e finishing them). In the end Lewis won the '08 title*… Had McLaren been banned, as they should have been, Lewis might not be 7x WDC right now (well, 2008 would be scratched) and a lot of people would have lost their jobs. The sport can’t sustain massive penalties, not with just 10 teams.
Max Mosely, former FIA president, on ‘Spygate’
"On top of that, we learned when we fully investigated in December, information that it was available to the people doing the 2008 car. We’ve an email from the chief engineer on the '07 car and the chief engineer on the '08 car referring to their mole in Ferrari. It’s there. We found it.
"So you had to not only exclude them from 2007, you would have had to have exclude them from 2008 because they had information that could have been used for the 2008 cars.
If we’d excluded McLaren from 2007 and 2008, the business was finished. Shut down. 1,400 people lose their jobs. There’s no way they could have survived that."
Also, this is accountancy, it’s never black and white. It’s a false equivalence to compare to technical infringements that can be measured using very specific methods, that even come under pressure. Flexing wings are kinda outlawed, but not. Merc and all teams have front wings that flex under load, clearly, just the rules are a bit grey… because enforcement is so complex. The rules don’t specifically ban flexing body, but they say something fixed bodywork and thatt hey can introduce new flex test if they suspect something untoward… So even with ‘black and white’ technical rules, it’s not so.
As TJ said this was a net 400k over-spend, and if the FIA pushed any harder on penalties, then RBR would have taken it a lot further (they clearly don’t think they are over, still). If RBR won their case (it appears the FIA are horribly under-staffed around this area, and thus open to ‘errors of interpretation’ their side) the damage would by ginormous. And this punishment was completely under the rules set out and agreed upon by the team. It can’t be huge if the rules literally state ‘minor’ and have an ABA facility to enforce it.
F1 is politics, it’s entertainment. Just everyone wait until next year when the budget cap saga comes round again, because this will happen again.
I do understand people’s feelings, but we’ve been here before. I remember a LOT of fans in 2007 and 2008 entirely disgruntled, especially when Hamilton won with a car developed while they had Ferrari’s secrets. This saga has proven my dislike of the budget cap, it really is unenforceable. I think in time we’ll learn that all submissions should be studied a LOT more closely. I’ve watched less and less F1 this year, and this is a partial reason.
Watching P3 with Mercedes performance in Mexico vs most other tracks, I’m thinking that they got their turbo sized a bit too large making it normally laggy, but more effective in the thinner air. Q3 will see if that holds.
They have one of the draggiest cars, so I think the thin air is helping them.
Thinner air would amplify turbo sizing issues. Not make it better.
Yes and no.
A larger turbo will always initially spool slower regardless of the air density. But it will be able to gather more air and on the top end make more power as long as the engine can move the air. At higher density that can be a detriment as it is pushing air (and heating it up) the engine cannot use, but at less density it is a plus.
For Q3, Russel had the quickest top end in sector 1 in the first run. If it is the draggiest car, you need top end power to overcome that at speed.
Any punishment that would change the outcome of the previous title would’ve destroyed the sport, and I totally get why that can’t happen, it just feels like they got away with just a slap on the wrist for breaking a very black and white rule.
I would’ve preferred a smaller fine that takes away from their cost cap, because $7m is pocket change for a multi billion dollar corporation
Maybe the 10% reduction in wind tunnel testing is bigger than I thought. We shall see.
I’m obviously going to be a bit biased, but I still think RB got away with a relatively light punishment.
It’s not black and white. Even technical rules are open to interpretation, so add accountancy into the mix and it gets murky very quickly.
54 pages JUST for the budget cap https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.12.pdf
There was also no evidence of willful overspend, it came down to some items being excluded by the accounting team that shouldn’t have been, as I understand it. RBR thought they were 3m under the cap but it turned out to be 0.4m over after a missed tax break was taken into consideration.
Most teams took advantage of a cost cap dry run submission in the previous year to kind of make sure their documentation ducks were all in a row. RBR did not and it bit them.
Two abservations: