Ex-Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle has hit out at the budget cap “mess” that is currently engrossing the paddock.
Following the Japanese Grand Prix earlier this month, the FIA confirmed that Red Bull was guilty of a “minor” breach of the 2021 budget cap.
The overspend could be anything up to $7 million, but Red Bull has asserted that the accounts it submitted were below the threshold.
Ahead of this weekend’s race event in Austin, Texas, Brundle told Sky F1 that the regulations as they stand aren’t right, as it appears there is leeway for teams to overspend by several million only for it to be considered a “minor” breach.
“It’s a mess all around because we’re talking about 2021 of course, not this season,” he said.
“We’ve got some hearsay, we don’t have any facts as to how much have overspent, what it means, what the penalty could be.
“It’s described as a minor breach if it’s up to seven million dollars. Clearly the regulations are not right, they’ve got to be changed because most teams will tell you that’s a season-long development budget.
“The terminology, a minor breach, suggests that it wasn’t of great gravity. Clearly it is, Red Bull are very sensitive about it.
“They say ‘we think we were under, they think we were over, we want to explain why’. But everyone’s gone to ground because the process dictates that. It’s just bad for F1 to have this hanging over us.
“Here we are at a magnificent event again, four in five weeks and we’re talking about finances from last season.”
Some parties have called for Red Bull to be issued a strict punishment to set a precedent for overspending the cost cap.
“We all want to know, put it to bed and we’ll see what the penalties are,” Brundle added.
“We have to assume there’s negotiations going on behind the scene, a lot at the moment.
“But I read the document on the plane, 54 pages – it’s quite a well written document, you do need to be an accountant or auditor to understand some of the terms.
“It’s there because we needed to stop the teams spending themselves to oblivion. It’s a really good tool that F1 has put together, one of the cornerstones of what we’re now doing in F1 to save the teams from themselves.”
brundle really needs to pipe down. he hates everything that is not English. just listen to his commentary on sky.
Strange you mention that …. RBR H/O – England , TP Horner – British , Tech Director Newey – British ????????
I don’t think there should be secret negotiations between the FIA and RBR. The FIA should be the one coming up with the penalty alone,decide what it should be and let’s move on
My thing is what are all the redbull and Max fans gonna do when It’s disclosed that redbull is over the cap in this year’s championship it’s obvious based on their ideology of the accounting that they are over 1a d it will be by more than lasts years amount don’t forget just 3 races ago redbull introduced an inseason 2 million dollar light weight chassis after bringing loads of upgrades in the races before with Mercedes and Ferrari having a budget of 4 million for upgrades it’s impossible with the average upgrade around 300.000 per upgrade and with them bringing. having used 3 2022 tokens I their fight with Mercedes last years and bringing the amount if upgrades that they have already brought outside of that foor it’s impossible that they will mees the budget which is already 5 million less than last years budget cap!!.