“It would be a shame if a championship was decided by the financial regulation and not the technical or sporting one” – this were the comments of Mattia Binotto, Ferrari team principal, after the Belgian Grand Prix, very similar to those he expressed at the end of the official pre-season testing session, before the start of the 2022 Formula 1 campaign.
As if nothing had changed after five months and above all a year and a half after the introduction of the budget cap, with a spending limit initially set at 145 million dollars, which became 140 million in the current season. Because of inflation, the teams were allowed an over-spending of 3.5%, around 5 million dollars more, a value that managed not to break that subtle balance between top teams and smaller teams. The only team that had voted against this plan was Alpine, with a purely strategic move. Thanks to a very clever choice, the French team was in fact able to freeze the price of energy before costs increased due to the war in Ukraine. An economic advantage that they did not want to give up and that would have allowed them to invest more in the development of the single-seater than their rivals. However, it alone could not block the measure.
“The budget cap is always a problem” – said Mattia Binotto -. The technical and sporting regulation has now been joined by the financial regulation which can obviously be interpreted by various teams. We are facing a very new regulation, with many inaccuracies, which the FIA must monitor in detail even if unfortunately they still do not have a large staff working on this.” The team principal of the Maranello team has once again discussed the budget cap given the recent rumors that Red Bull would intend to bring to the track in the next races (not at Zandvoort in the Dutch GP this weekend) a lighter chassis of 4 kg, which could be worth a tenth and a half of direct benefits in terms of lap time.
Already at the conclusion of the Miami GP, and after the continuous updates brought to the track by the Anglo-Austrian team, Mattia Binotto had hoped that Red Bull at some point would stop the development of the RB18 “because there is a budget limit, otherwise I don’t understand how they can afford it. “
However, these new rumors, also verified by rival teams, have again fueled suspicions and concerns. the new chassis would be an update worth at least 2 million dollars, confirmed at the end of the Belgian weekend by Max Verstappen and that Christian Horner did not want to completely deny, which the Anglo-Austrian team claims is possible thanks to the extra budget granted by the Federation and the fact that they have brought fewer updates to the track than Ferrari and Mercedes. Looking at the list of updates of the 14 events that have taken place so far, it would not seem like it.
«As Ferrari we could never introduce a lighter or different chassis due to the budget cap. I would be surprised if some other team succeeds in doing it and if it does, the rules will tell if it will be possible or not”. There are many concerns related to the budget cap, including the difficulty in closing audits on the financial statements, if you think that those of 2021 have not been finalized yet, despite the fact that we are now in the middle of the season.
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Not to mention the relationships that teams can develop thanks to collaborations with external companies, to which they could entrust part of the updates without budgeting them. This is the case of Red Bull Advanced Technologies or Mercedes Applied Science, both structures headed by the two teams but which develop technologies for various sectors including sailing, starting with the America’s Cup, with Ernesto Bertarelli’s Alinghi for the Milton Keynes team or Ineos for Mercedes.
Without forgetting the collaboration between BMC and Red Bull Advanced Technologies from which the fastest bike in the world was created. It is no coincidence then that Mclaren has opened many extra Formula 1 projects in recent months that still take expertise from the top flight of motorsport. Nothing irregular clearly, as long as illegality is not proven, but which introduces much more difficulties for the few staff that has the task of financially monitoring and ensuring that it is not the smartest but the best who wins. . Although in Formula 1 the two things often go hand in hand.
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