Red Bull is reportedly considering a shift in focus for Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey amid the financial constraints imposed by Formula 1’s budget cap.
In an attempt to level the playing field between the elite and the rest, F1 teams were limited to a budget of $145m in 2021 when the cost cap was first introduced.
While the enforcement of the cap focuses primarily on the costs of competition and performance, several key areas are exempt including the salaries of drivers and the three highest-paid staff members – typically the team principal, technical director and one other.
Ahead of the 2023 season, the budget cap had been reduced to $135m, limiting the frequency and scale of performance-related upgrades that teams were able to introduce.
Red Bull has enjoyed great success in F1’s budget cap era taking three consecutive Drivers’ titles with Max Verstappen and back-to-back Constructors’ titles in 2022 and 2023.
However, it hasn’t been plain sailing, with the Austrian outfit found to have breached the cost cap in 2021, incurring a $7 million fine and a 10% reduction in wind tunnel time.
Reports from German outlet AMuS claim that Newey could be sidelined for the medium term to focus solely on non-F1 projects in order to retain the Briton’s services while also freeing up one of the three exemptions for high earners.
The budget cap and its intricacies have made it more difficult for teams to retain and promote staff from within, seeing Red Bull lose key talents such as Dan Fallows and Rob Marshall to Aston Martin and McLaren respectively.
Having lost a crop of senior staff to its chasing rivals, Red Bull may be hoping that in reshuffling Newey the team will be able to retain figures such as technical director Pierre Wache and head of aerodynamics Enrico Balbo.
The high-salaried designer has split his F1 duties working part-time on the company’s RB17 road car project which will see a limited run of 50 cars produced by Red Bull Advanced Technologies. Even though his contribution to the F1 project is part-time, Newey’s salary must still be considered under the cost cap rules.
With several teams expanding their operations by introducing applied divisions such as RBAT, the FIA in 2023 issued Technical Directive 45 to close the possible loophole of senior technical figures benefitting F1 programmes outside of the budget cap.
As described by Newey, the RB17 hypercar ‘pushes design and technical boundaries far beyond what has been previously available to enthusiasts and collectors,’ however the complexity of the project has led to scrutiny from rivals and the FIA.
“Our opponents are interpreting it in such a way that the underbody of the RB17 provides information for the Formula 1 car, which is of course complete nonsense. That’s why we have to find a solution,” Helmut Marko rebuked when asked if the RB17 project was a means to circumvent F1’s cost cap rules.
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