Red Bull Racing have entered ‘settlement negotiations’ with the FIA following the adjudication of Formula One’s governing body that there Milton teams team breached the 2021 $145m spending limit. Initially the team will debate the items the FIA believe were not included in their submission in March and argue why they are not relevant.
If both parties can agree a final spending amount a ‘settlement agreement’ will be reached with either Red Bull back under the cost cap or agreeing an overspend together with a penalty.
Were there still to be no agreement then the matter goes to a cost cap arbitration panel of Judges and then if Red Bull decide to an appeal at the FIA’s International Court of Arbitration.
Red Bull overspend unclear
Since the original German publication AMuS claimed Red Bull had overspent by $10m during the Singapore GP, the FIA have revealed the breach is ‘minor’ This means in fact the overspend is less than $7.25m.
The latest guess from the German media is the overspend is around $1.8m and it relates to Adrian Newey’s remuneration for other activities outside of Formula One.
READ: Red Bull “craft salary trick” to avoid budget overspend
Teams are allowed to exclude their top three earners from the budget and Red Bull in fact claim Newey is in fact exempt under this regulation.
No points deduction for Max
The fact that Red Bull’s overspend is declared as ‘minor’ will disappoint the Lewis Hamilton fans because it is highly improbably the FIA now will resort to points deductions and rewriting the Formula One history books for 2021.
However, an incident at the British GP last season could have cost Red Bull a sum that roughly equates to the amount of their cost cap breach.
The title contenders started the race on the front row of the grid with Verstappen o pole. Hamilton made the slightly better start and was harassing Verstappen all the way to turn 9 Copse corner.
Hamilton costs Red Bull the overspend
On the exit of Luffield (turn 8) Hamilton was gaining down the old pits straights on the Dutch driver and pulled to the side to make the pass. As they entered the high speed turn Hamilton’s front left wheel hit Verstappens rear right sending him spinning out into the barrier.
The impact Verstappen suffered was later revealed to be 51g and despite receiving a time penalty for causing the incident, Hamilton went on to win the race.
crash.net estimate the damage Hamilton caused to Verstappens car to be around $2m.
FIA to rewrite ‘minor overspend’ rules
Of course Formula One and motorsports have never forced a guilty party to pay for another team’s damage – regardless of whether they were deemed at fault by the stewards of the race.
In line with this, despite Hamilton costing Red Bull around $2m to repair the RB17 for the next round in Hungary; this will not be a mitigating factor Red Bull can call upon in their negotiations with the FIA.
Given the breadth of the ‘minor overspend’ category together with sanctions ranging from a reprimand to points deduction, it is likely Red Bull ad the FIA will agree a minor sanction and re-write the rules for ‘minor reach’ that will apply now for the 2023 season.
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Red Bull are cheats and should be punished. Mercedes did not overspend when Max went over the top of Lewis’s car. If the FIA don’t punish them this time all the other team’s will go over budget. They probably had to pay Michael Massi to allow them to cheat.
Never a question, a breach is a breach! If the FIA will play the game and start waggling their tail again to RB then I no longer believe with the commission. CH looks and speaks like a bully… never sympathised the guy…
Whoa! Take the blinders off! Making accusations of bribery is way out of line and plain stupid.
Mercedes caused 3 Crashes last season do you ever look at that for a record to fix the car. Just because Mercedes couldn’t find the aerodynamics problem and lewis is getting old don’t bother calling red bull cheats. 🙄 KMT
So you’re saying the over spend was due to the crash brought to them by other teams? You’re so much like Christine Horney 🙂
Hi orange people. Your Breaktester driver caused the crash at Silverstone 2021, he just could not handle being dummied by the 8 x FIA F1 Rules Champion! Didums.
And now the Breaktester has lost the 2022 F1 championship because their cheating overspend will have affected the 2021 car and the 2022 development.
Still that’s all good news, at least the 2022 Championship will belong to a proper driver like Leclerc and not a cheating Breaktester, no matter what the orange FIA say.
Happy days.
And the orange guy left the building… exactly like Sergio’s tweet
Very very sad reply…
Yet another poorly written article. The reason for the breach was because they thought they were being smart excluding salaries of key staff, like Newey, and counting them as contractors. It’s actually in the article you wrote, yet once again, all RBRs woes are down to Mercedes or Hamilton.
Mercedes had a total write off at Imola, the whole car, and then damage in Hungary. Teams allow a buffer for damage and Silverstone was half way through the season.
If they chose to carry on spending then more fool them.
Total BS. All F1 cars suffer damage and is deemed racing incidents. Max could have backed off and avoided the accident which he never does so you could have said Max cost Redbull the £1.6mil.
Silverstone 2021, Hamilton nowhere near the apex and tags Max’s rear tyre.
Silverstone 2022, Hamilton hits the apex and Leclerc passes brilliantly.
Don’t delude yourselves that Hamilton suffered under steer because he lost downforce, he was alongside on both occasions…
The difference was he wasn’t in a title fight with Charles.
Go back and see what Rosberg had to say at the time, Lewis is a master of dirty driving in the grey areas.
Mercedes had their run of championships and now they are wining as they don’t have a competitive car. Boohoo, the whole history of F1 has been like this where a team dominates for awhile and then another team or teams finally catches up.
Mercedes is carrying on like a bunch of sorry losers and I sure as hell don’t forsee $1 or 2 million making them SO much faster?
The big factor I think is age as Max is significantly younger than Lewis and F1 isn’t nothing like NASCAR where you can race competitively till your 40 years old or more. I think Hamilton has to accept that he isn’t a spring chicken anymore as evidently his own younger team mate is out performing him.
Just my two cents worth?
This is an absolutely ludicrous assertion. Red Bull also brought 4 more upgrade packages after Silverstone, how come none of them are in your calculations for how the cheats overspent?