Scuderia Ferrari admitted that they are “not happy” with the decision made by the FIA regarding the sanction imposed on rivals Red Bull Racing after the Austrian side was found guilty of breaching the Formula 1 budget cap rules last season.
The Formula 1 governing body officially confirmed yesterday it had reached an agreement with Red Bull to settle the illegality related to the financial matter in 2021: Red Bull spent £1.86m more than allowed and as a result it has received a $7m fine and 10% reduction in aerodynamic research and testing.
Ferrari racing director Laurent Mekies pointed out that Red Bull’s breach was “a significant amount” and that “the real effect of the penalty is very limited”, while Red Bull team principal Christian Horner felt the sanction was in fact “draconian”.
The Red Bull boss feels that the consequence of the aerodynamic reduction on the Austrian side’s challenger “represents between 0.25secs and 0.5secs of lap time – it comes in from now and will be in place for a 12-month period”, while also referring to a line in the FIA statement that said had Red Bull Bull applied the correct treatment to a notional tax credit, the team would have exceeded the budget cap limit by just £432,652. This, he pointed out, reduced the overspend from 1.6% to 0.37%.
Yet Laurent Mekies does not agree with Red Bull’s comments regarding the possible effects of the sanction. The Ferrari Racing Director was interviewed by Sky Sports Italia after Friday practice and explained:
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“We at Ferrari think that this amount (of overspend) is worth around a couple of tenths (per lap), and so it’s easy to understand that these figures can have a real impact on the outcome of the races and maybe even a championship. As for the penalty, we are not happy with it, for two important reasons. The first is that we at Ferrari do not understand how the 10% reduction of the ATA (aerodynamic research allowance) can correspond to the same amount of lap time that we mentioned earlier. Furthermore, there is another problem in that, since there is no budget cap reduction in the penalty, the basic effect is to push the competitor to spend the money elsewhere. It has total freedom to use the money it can no longer spend on use of the wind tunnel and CFD due to the 10% reduction, on reducing the weight of the car or who knows what else. Our concern is that the combination of these two factors means the real effect of the penalty is very limited.” – Laurent Mekies said.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff added on the Red Bull controversy: “Overall, it’s good to see that there is a penalty, whether we deem it too low or too high. I think what you see is that beyond a sporting penalty and financial fine, it’s also reputational damage. In a world of transparency and good governance, that’s just not on anymore.” – he concluded.
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