MEXICO CITY – Mercedes team director Toto Wolff believes the reputational damage Red Bull suffered after breaching Formula One’s cost cap last year was a big enough factor to prevent teams from doing the same. Future.
Red Bull was fined $7 million and had his aerodynamic test allowance reduced by 10 percent for the next 12 months after filing accounts that were found to be 1.6 percent over the 145 million limit. dollars in 2021. The FIA issued the penalty on Friday, looking to account for the fact that Red Bull omitted a tax credit in its submission, which could reduce the overspend to zero. 37% if it is taken into account.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner called the punishment “draconian” but said his team was “reluctant” to accept the penalty in the interest of drawing a straight line on the problem.
Wolff said he believes the penalty is somewhat lenient but said the reputational damage Red Bull has suffered as a result of the breach will be enough to deter other teams from deliberately breaching the limit to gain an advantage.
“I think what you see is that in addition to the sports fine and the financial penalty, there’s also a reputational damage and in a world of transparency and good governance that doesn’t exist anymore,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “And comply wisely, on any team you have a responsibility to represent a brand, your employees, your partners, and that’s why for us, it’s not.” must be a business case.”
F1’s aerodynamic testing rules work on a sliding scale, with the first-place team receiving the least amount of capacity for the next six months and the last-place team receiving the most time. Wolff expects Red Bull to take a performance hit as a result of the penalty, which will add to the wind tunneling shortfall Red Bull had as the defending champions at the time. next year.
He added: “Any reduction in wind tunnel time will have an impact on performance. “We were lucky to win the championship so in 18 months we were 7% behind Red Bull for over a year and a half.
“Overall, it all adds up and if you look at Ferrari at the moment, they were 6th last year and a lot more performance than time has added. So now we’re not. may benefit from being 3rd on the road, getting 14% more than the leader and now we have 10% more which is quite a lot but you need to see where you use it. “
When asked about his thoughts on the sanction process, Wolff added: “I think the most important thing for me is to have a strong governance background.
“They don’t move an eyelid, they just follow the procedure, how it goes, Federico [Lodi, FIA head of financial regulations] and his team, Shaila Ann [Rao, FIA interim secretary general for sport] and Nikolas [Tombazis, single-seater technical head]I think they’re perfectly good at judging – I know how hard they’ve been with us, throughout the year,
“It’s been a difficult process and when I see 13 positions wrong, it’s not for us. And it’s good to see a penalty, whether we think it’s too low or too high.”
