Following weeks of debate and discussions, the FIA confirmed a few days ago that Red Bull Racing were guilty of a ‘minor’ breach of Formula 1’s budget cost cap, which was introduced last season with the goal of leveling the playing field by preventing teams from investing more than a limit of $145m per championship.
The word ‘minor’ means Red Bull exceeded last year’s budget cap by less than five per cent, the equivalent of $7.25m.
Aston Martin, who were initially rumoured to have also exceeded the cost cap for 2021, only committed a ‘procedural’ breach, which is related to filling out forms incorrectly, the same infringement Williams was accused of this year.
According to several reports, Red Bull have exceeded the budget cap by about $2m, which would be less than Mercedes and Scuderia Ferrari were suggesting a few weeks ago during the Singapore weekend. For now this is just speculation until the FIA will officially provide more details about the situation.
In the meanwhile, let’s take a look at what exactly Red Bull could have afforded with that extra budget.
‘A new floor or adapted wing’ – $300,000
Before the Suzuka weekend, Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton pointed out that if Mercedes would have invested more money in developing the 2021 Formula One car, the outcome of the championship battle against Max Verstappen could have been different.
Last season, Mercedes introduced its last big upgrade package at the Silverstone race in July, but Red Bull seemed to constantly bring updates until the controversial final race of the season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“If we had, if we spent $300,000 on a new floor or an adapted wing it would have changed the outcome of the championship, naturally, because we would have been in better competition in the next race you had it on,” Lewis Hamilton explained, in an interview for Sky Sport F1.
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A new chassis – about $1m
It is a well-known fact that Formula 1 chassis are very expensive, even more so when a team has to replace them. Ferrari junior Mick Schumacher was involved in a few unfortunate incidents that affected the chassis of his Haas car this season: the Ferrari Driver Academy member crashed in Saudi Arabia, Monaco and more recently, at the Suzuka circuit. For the American team, which most likely is well under the budget cap limit, a brand new chassis is clearly a very expensive development.
Haas boss Guenther Steiner pointed out following Mick Schumacher’s crash at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit: “Between gearbox, the whole bodywork is gone, radiator ducts are gone, so it’s between half a million and a million I would say.”
Crash damage – more than $1.8m
The damage resulting from crashes can be an important part as to why a Formula 1 team may potentially breach the cost cap, even if the damage is out of their control. For example, Red Bull Dutch driver Max Verstappen was involved in a big crash at the Baku street circuit in Azerbaijan due to a tyre failure, which means there was no fault of his own.
A few weeks later, Max Verstappen was hit by Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap of the British Grand Prix, a race which the Mercedes driver eventually won, while Red Bull was left with a damage cost of about $1.8m. Not long later, the Dutchman (and his Mexican teammate Sergio Perez) suffered more damage at the Hungaroring circuit, due to a crash caused by Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.
This means that two incidents which were caused by rivals put Red Bull into the situation of having to spend more money in order to cover the costs for fixing the car or bringing new parts.
Max Verstappen made contact with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton on other occasions during the 2021 Formula 1 season, such as the incident in the Italian Grand Prix, but that time it was arguably the Red Bull driver’s fault. However, teams are aware that the damage variable is a key factor that has to be taken into consideration at the beginning of the season when evluating how the budget will be used.
Lightweight chassis – around $2m
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff highlighted that his side could not afford to develop a lightweight chassis this season, because it would have put Mercedes $2m over the budget limit. On the other hand, Red Bull were rumoured to bring such a lightweight chassis at a certain moment this year, but eventually opted against it, mainly because they knew they could win both titles even without such a major update for the RB18.
Toto Wolff confirmed two weeks ago that his team would have needed such a development update, but simply couldn’t afford to do so: “We haven’t produced lightweight parts for the car in order to bring us down from a double digit overweight because we simply haven’t got the money. So we need to do it for next year’s car. We can’t homologate a lightweight chassis and bring it in, because it’s $2m more that we will be over the cap. So you can see every spend more has a performance advantage.” – he pointed out.
Upgrades for the entire F1 campaign – $2-4 million
Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto admitted that $4m would cover the Maranello team’s “development parts for an entire season.”
This means that for half of a Formula 1 championship, it’s in the region of $2m.
If we think that a minor breach is considered anywhere under $7.25m, it is clear why Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes and vocal against Red Bull’s actions and demand severe punishment:
“It’s important to understand that even if it is $4m, which falls into the category of what is considered a minor breach, $4m is not minor. For us, $4m represents the development parts for an entire season. Four million means 70 people in a technical department who can come up with and produce solutions that could be worth up to half a second a lap. So even if we are looking at something considered a minor breach it’s not peanuts.” – Mattia Binotto explained.
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