Red Bull And FIA Negotiating Punishments For Budget Cap Breach

Written By Uche Dozie

Red Bull and motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, are negotiating the punishments for the team’s breach of Formula One’s 2021 budget cap.

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The FIA offers terms of an ‘accepted breach agreement’ to Red Bull following their breach of Formula 1’s cost cap, according to multiple reports.

Red Bull is believed to have overspent by around $1.8 million last year, which constitutes a “minor” breach of the financial regulations.

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Red Bull is the only one of F1’s 10 teams to have overspent. Aston Martin faces a fine for making a procedural breach when it submitted its financial records.

The development in the saga that has dominated the start of the United States GP weekend leaves Red Bull with a decision over whether to accept the offer and likely a lesser punishment, or go before an adjudication panel.

McLaren boss Zak Brown wrote a letter, circulated this week, which said any breach of F1’s budget cap “constitutes cheating.”

Although early speculation was that Red Bull could see Max Verstappen lose his 2021 championship, it is clear that this has never been on the table.

Red Bull maintains that it did not intend to breach the regulations, pointing to a failure to claim an R&D tax rebate last year worth $1.4m, sick pay for one employee and catering costs for employees not covered by the cap being included.

Other teams maintain that they all managed to stick to the cap and had an open dialogue with the FIA about what was allowed within the cap throughout last year.

Highlighting how big a task the audits have been, Red Bull’s financial statement was a 75,000-line Excel spreadsheet.

The other option open to Red Bull would be to reject the ABA and take the case to the cost cap adjudication panel, though doing so may result in stricter sanctions if an appeal is unsuccessful.

If Red Bull reject the FIA’s offer, the case would be heard by the cost cap panel and the full range of penalties would be on the table.

Meanwhile…

Lewis Hamilton says Red Bull being found to have breached Formula 1’s cost cap has brought up “emotion” from agonisingly losing out in his 2021 world championship battle with Max Verstappen.

Mercedes driver Hamilton was denied an eighth world championship in controversial circumstances as an unprecedented call by race director Michael Masi afforded Verstappen the chance to take the lead on the final lap, before winning the race and title.

Hamilton considered walking away from the sport before returning for 2022 and “moving on” from the incident, but admits old wounds have been opened up with the Dutchman’s team now having been found to have breached the sport’s budget cap in its first season in operation.

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“I don’t necessarily have much of an opinion because I’m not really focused on it,” Hamilton said on Thursday ahead of this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.

“It’s happened in the past for me. I would say I’d moved on from last year, and of course this popping up at this point in the season definitely brings up emotion for many people, the fans, for everyone. For how it went down at the end of last year and then on top of that, this happened.”

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