F1 wants “much earlier” decision on whether teams obeyed cost cap rules

2023 F1 season

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Formula 1 does not want to see a repeat of last year’s long-running wrangle over teams’ compliance with the cost cap.

The series’ CEO Stefano Domenicali said yesterday he wants confirmation whether teams have adhered to the cost cap given “much earlier” than in 2022.

Red Bull and Aston Martin were found to have breached the budget cap regulations during the 2021 season, the first time they were imposed. However the penalties for those rules violations were not announced until late October last year. That coincided with Max Verstappen winning the drivers’ championship and Red Bull clinching the constructors’ title.

Domenicali said it is important the FIA concludes its assessment of teams’ finances earlier than it did last year. “For the credibility of the sport this kind of action, to check if everyone is respecting that rule, has to be done earlier than later,” he told Sky.

“So we are discussing, and this is on the FIA’s side to make sure that the control and the certification would be done much earlier. Because the effect on and if some teams will be out of it, has to be done in a proper way in as short a time as possible to be more credible.

“We see other sports that are taking the financial regulation with, in my opinion, too long time for a reaction and this is not good.”

Red Bull, who also took Verstappen to the drivers’ championship in 2021, were fined and given a reduction in their Aerodynamic Testing Restriction for exceeding the spending limit. The impact of Red Bull’s penalty on their performance “is a point on which I see there will be a lot of attention this year,” Domenicali admitted.

“I think that first of all, we don’t have to forget one thing that the step change of financial regulation in Formula 1 has been a step change in the governance of that sport,” he added. “And I was thinking that we could have even more problems to manage because the dimensions of the complexity, it is really huge.”

Domenicali said he hopes no team is found to have exceeded the cap last season, the second year it was in place. “I’m pretty sure that everyone understanding now what is the effect, if there is something not going well in that dimension, that is new,” he said. “So I totally agree that the focus on these actually would be very big.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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8 comments on “F1 wants “much earlier” decision on whether teams obeyed cost cap rules”

  1. Self inflicted issue. Yes, more timely would be nice. Not a bad score despite it being late last time: It was a first iteration (and Dom admits the complexity is huge) and only at a few teams minor breaches were found. If not for the strategic PR plan from some other teams this would have been a decent result for a first iteration and FIA could have claimed that. Instead they let people speculate and conduct media warfare before they announced the result. I would simply add to the rule book that talking before your turn on official FIA business is a breach as well. By the time of announcement all minds were made up already and the FIA was deprived of their chance to smoothly introduce and calibrate this complex processes. I know some people would like to re-iterate RedBull was in the wrong but they also know themselves it wasnt worth having a discussion about and was merely triggered by frustration about other events in 2021.

    1. I agree with your view on the poor handeling of last years cost cap but I don’t think that your solution is realistic. It shoud be clear much sooner. Prefer that the FIA monitors the spending on monthly bases so we know that everybody is within the CC before the season is ended instead of the following year. They have to make it less complex and more transparant. But I guess this will never happen so maybe they should just abandon the whole CC regulations it doesn’t work.

      1. The complication with that is, that the spending is not stable over the season. The teams spend huge amounts when they are developing the basics of the car for the next season, then there is a bit of a slump, then a lot of spending on manufacturing and crashtesting everything + further CFD and Tunnel testing during the winter months, a slump, then an uptick as they bring the cars to testing + manufacture furtehr parts. Then another slump when the first cars get shipped for the first few races, an uptick to do the first run of updates and probably another longers slump with a few bumps for updates/repairs during most of the first half of the season etc. and possibly a slump later in the season if they run into issues to keep within budget.

        So you cannot really tell whether a team is over budget from looking at a single month. At best, you can compare a trend when you put that next to the budget spending for the previous season (and to an extent benchmarking between the teams), but it won’t be conclusive until the end of the year.

        1. petebaldwin (@)
          13th February 2023, 14:41

          And on top of that, there were issues regarding tax for Red Bull – I don’t remember the exact specifics but there was money they were expecting to get back that they didn’t get.

          This isn’t necessarily settled until we’ll after the season finishes so you’ve got multiple processes to go through before you come to a final figure. Then it gets investigated by the FIA, appealed by the team found to have breached the cap and so on…..

          It’s far too complex to manage this easily. Look at Manchester City – they’re being accused of breaking financial rules going back years and years.

          Lots said before the budget cap came in that it would be far too complex to work smoothly and that’s what we’re seeing now.

        2. Good point. That is why I think it should be less complex and more transparant. A tax reduction for example should not he part of the CC. If it takes 9 months to figure out the CC and it can change the outcome od the WDC or WCC of the year before than this system is useless.

  2. Andy (@andyfromsandy)
    13th February 2023, 13:26

    Coincidentally it just so happens that the team that went over the cost cap just happened to win the WCC and WDC.

    Since then there has been members of ORBR confident the penalty will have real effect on the 2023 car. Only Horner is trying to play it down that the penalty will affect lap times by a very small amount.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      13th February 2023, 14:43

      True but also coincidentally, it was the year that ground effects became the most important part of the car and unsurprisingly, the Adrian Newey designed car was the fastest.

  3. How far out of touch with reality is this guy?
    Lawyers and accountants equal billing hours not speed.

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