The FIA confirmed earlier today that Red Bull Racing would receive a $7 million fine (just over £6 million) and most importantly an aerodynamic development restriction for the 2023 Formula 1 championship due to breaching the Formula 1 budget cap limit last season.
While Red Bull strenuously denied for days that its financial statements sent last year to the FIA was over the £118,036,000 limit imposed by the rules, the Austrian side has not decided to accept a ‘Breach Agreement’ that basically is an admission of guilt, as the FIA and Red Bull also agree on the sanctions.
FIA provided details about several areas in which Red Bull ‘incorrectly excluded and/or adjusted costs’, including catering, employee social security and non-Formula 1 activities, among others.
Yet an official press release published by the FIA alongside the agreement says “that Red Bull Racing has acted cooperatively throughout the review process and has sought to provide additional information and evidence when requested in a timely manner”. This means that they don’t think Red Bull was intentionally cheating.
At the same time Aston Martin has received a fine of $450,000 due to a ‘procedural breach’ relating to the paperwork it filed as part of its submission to the FIA, something Red Bull was punished for.
Despite the fact that Red Bull has to pay a fine of $7 million, the Austrian team will not also suffer a reduction in the amount of money they can use for the following Formula is campaign, as rumoured in the paddock during the last few days.
Not to mention the fact that its 10 per cent reduction in wind tunnel and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) testing which the teams use to develop their uber-complicated aero designs is technically only seven per cent. This is because of the rules which state that, as constructors’ champions this year, Red Bull were allowed only 70 per cent of a fixed amount of time for the next season, so a 10 per cent hit is calculated to the amount of time left and takes them down to 63 per cent.
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As Red Bull has accepted the ABA, in 2023 it will have 60% / 2000 = 1200 hours SiM CFD and 60% / 400 = 240 hours in the wing tunnel.
‘Agreed’ / ABA sanctions (-10% hours) lead RBR to have:
-40% from FERRARI
-45% from MERCEDES
-50% P4 and so on.
Under normal conditions, approximately every eight weeks Red Bull would have had 280 hours of wind tunnel work and 56 hours of actual testing, i.e. with a wind speed above approximately 50 km / h. In purely relative terms, Ferrari would have had 7% more hours than Red Bull, a gap that rises to 14% in the case of Mercedes. However, following the penalty, the C coefficient for reducing the aerodynamic resources assigned to Red Bull drops to 63%.
All this translates into 252 hours of work and 50 hours of actual tests, respectively 28 and 6 hours less than the original values, again referring to periods of eight weeks. In the relative comparison between the three top teams, in 2023 the world champions will have 19% fewer resources than the Scuderia from Maranello, a gap more than double. The Italian side will have 288 and 60 hours more than its rivals, respectively, of work available and actual tests in the wind tunnel.
Red Bull’s gap to Mercedes instead grows to 27%, with the German side house having 320 hours of wind tunnel every eight weeks, over 400 hours more than Red Bull in the balance of the entire calendar year. Although therefore the penalty inflicted was less severe than initially suggested, the Milton Keynes team will be severely limited regarding the possibilities of analysis in comparison with its direct rivals. Always provided that the limiting factor for development is actually dictated by the hours in the tunnel and the CFD and not by the economic resources imposed by the budget cap.
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