UNITED KINGDOM: FIA on Monday confirmed that Red Bull Racing was guilty of a “minor overspend breach” regarding last season’s budget.
According to the budget cap regulations introduced from 2021 onwards, a minor overspend means the team overspent by less than five percent of the $145 million cap, i.e., less than $7.25 million.
Red Bull quickly put out a statement expressing their “surprise and disappointment” while insisting that the team was below the budget cap limit.
The FIA and Red Bull were reported to be in talks about their findings soon after the team clinched the 2022 Drivers’ Championship title for Max Verstappen in a rain-affected race filled with drama.
Red Bull’s Chief Advisor, Dr. Helmut Marko, maintains that the team is innocent. In an interview with a media outlet, he said, “I don’t want to say too much, just this much. We still believe that we didn’t break the cost cap rule at all. […] Discussions with the FIA are ongoing. Let’s see what finally comes out of it.”
Red Bull will have two options ahead of them once the dialogue with the FIA concludes. They can either accept the ‘breach agreement’ and the sanctions that will accompany it, or they can appeal the findings by the FIA.
Among the many potential sanctions, one is a loss of Driver’s and Constructors’ Championship points, which can lead to Max Verstappen being stripped of his controversial 2021 title, which he had won after then-race director Michael Masi failed to follow safety car rules, thereby handing an unfair advantage and a win to Max Verstappen from Lewis Hamilton, who seemed to be set for a record-breaking 8th world title.
According to Helmut Marko, the possibility of Max losing his 2021 title is nonsense. He said, “As I said, we are still not aware of any guilt, which is why discussions with the FIA are still ongoing. But rumours that Max could lose his World title in 2021, for example, are complete nonsense.”
In a dig at the FIA, he added, “The past has shown that even extreme violations of the regulations are punished very mildly by the FIA,” referring to the violation of power unit regulations by Ferrari in 2019.
Ferrari might not share the same view as Helmut Marko, since they were reported to have had their 2020 engine power turned down as a punishment, resulting in a horrible season for the scarlet team from Italy, where they finished 6th in the constructors’ championship.
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