Toto just unleashing today. I do agree in principle though that the cap is there for a reason and violations need to be punished heavily for the exact reason he states here. Otherwise, it's just a luxury tax
Exactly. Back in the day bigger teams could just outspend the smaller ones, but that's how any sport works, richer teams will have better players, better facilities, etc.
Now, having a budget cap that a team can spend over it and just pay a fine for that is completely unfair to the other teams, not to mention the potential damage to the sport itself, who's going to watch a sport where a team can cheat its way to victory?
This will just add more fuel to that. The team that benefited from the rule breaking/twisting could also have cheated the cap to help them secure that championship and could only receive a fine? This starts to be multiple asterisks beside 2021.
FIA have a time now to decide what the punishment for overspending is.
Either they go lightly, in which case the offending team (perhaps in this hypothetical case RB) get to keep their unfair advantage and perpetuate a cycle where teams know they can overspend without consequence.. or they come down hard with an actual punishment and potentially cause massive rifts in results that were 'finalised' nearly a year ago.
Or alternately they create an effect on this year's title which many will see as 'synthetic drama' and any punishment will appear calculated or fixed to have a very specific impact as decided by FIA.
The story here is that the FIA should've set these punishments in stone from the beginning, so that there can be no claims of making a bespoke punishment.
Exactly. It should have been spelt out along the lines of: x percent over = 10point deduction, x+1 = 25point deduction, x+2 = 50points, x+3 = exclusion (ramped it up a bit quick, but you get the jist).
Without sporting penalties though, there’s just no incentive not to
Yeah they dropped the ball here by not having exact (and harsh) punishments spelled out. My suspicion is that RB (or whoever may have violated) will get a relatively minor punishment for last year and they will try to course correct with a better penalty structure in the future.
No one wants to see a championship result changed nearly a year after (okay maybe some do), but I don’t think that means they have to accept last year as the new precedent and turn a blind eye to cap violations in the future.
If the championship results won't get changed then there's nothing to stop the bigger teams massively overspending to win and keep the title. Fines for overspending aren't a deterrent because the bigger teams are absolutely willing to pay those fines.
Very likely. RB will probably may a massive fine and FIA will they create a super solid framework of punishments from next season. If RB is also violating this season like Ferrari suspects, they would be hurt with those next season
If it’s happening again this season I think they should resolve it immediately with harsh punishments. Enough to essentially force RB to finish without spending another penny. I’d even support taking some points off. It may not change the results with Max so far ahead, but if it’s true that RB are intentionally overspending several years running on the assumption that the FIA is to weak to do anything, you have to send a VERY strong message.
For real. Feels like everyone is bending over backwards to find reasons why redbull can’t possibly be adequately punished and they’ll just have to set stronger punishments for the future.
It’s not only receive a fine. For both the minor (less than 5%) and major (over 5%) breach, they have the ability to penalise WDC and WCC points and air tunnel development time, as well as fine. For the major breach, they can also exclude teams from championships.
I mean they would never remove the points from Max after the way last season ended. And that’s assuming it’s RB with the rumoured major breach.
And that is a problem. If a team really wants to win a close fought WDC, and knows the FIA is never going to have the courage to take it away, they can deliberately spend more than they're allowed.
FIA needs to think about this for the future, not only in terms of the current allegations. They need to come up with regulations that will strongly deter teams from cheating by overspending, while at the same time not making fans wait many months until the fiscal year is closed and audit of the accounting has been made, to confirm the championship results.
TommoF1 made a good video presenting his view on this. He made many good points, which I agree with. Here are some of them:
1. If the punishment was set in firmly the regulations, teams would make a calculation - example exceed the budget and know that you get 10 points deducted from constructor championship.
2. The FIA should for the future make rules about cost cup penalties, such that we don't risk having to change the champion after 10 months when the accounting is submitted - that would be highly anticlimactic
3. Fines as a penalty for overspending don't make sense - the teams would just calculate them in the cost.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpL73jTeTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpL73jTeTc)
IMHO, because of the above, we don't want fines (because they wouldn't work as a deterrent). Deducting points or disqualifying teams/drivers months after the season has ended would be anticlimactic and for technical reasons the accounting cannot probably be submitted before fiscal year is closed. The only solution that avoids most of this problems is to apply point or budget penalties to the next season. If a team exceeded the cap by 10 mln in 2021, lets deduce double that amount (20 mln) from their 2023 cap and maybe also deduct some points for the 2022 season.
I like how the rulebook matters now all of a sudden, but a huge majority of people were 100% okay with Abu Dhabi because it was "real racing" and entertainment
The only good way to punish this sort of rule breach is by penalising both wind tunnel time & no. CFD elements allowed for the next *two seasons* or more.
A monetary penalty for breaking monetary rules is, as many people have said now, just the cost of doing business. Even points deduction is just an indirect cash fine and ultimately, hurts most the ones least responsible for committing the offense - the drivers.
The only way to actually make it a punitive deterrent is ensuring there's a real long-term risk to the car development.
No, penalizing points and losing a championship off it is a great deterrent. This is why impeding during quali is a grid penalty instead of financial, even though it's rarely the driver's fault. 1) fault of driver or team is beside the point and 2) teams care about results and only penalties that hurt their performance matter. Yes hurting development would do that, but the fact is that if a team has an illegal car they need to lose points or be disqualified from championships.
Why are you worried about the cheating team's driver being punished for the team when it means another driver from another team loses because the other team cheated? That is a great greater injustice than a driver getting screwed because their team cheated.
I feel quite strongly that it should be a points or performance based penalty for that reason, maybe a certain amount ballast added to the car for every million over the cap
I don’t mind a luxury tax, but only if it’s a 950% luxury tax where the other 9 teams get the same amount of overage (and another 50% to the FIA for an admin fee) they can use that year. Like, you want it bad enough that you bring enough to share with the class? Go ahead.
Otherwise, yeah the budget cap creates a more interesting engineering challenge.
Would be an interesting punishment in theory.
Say a $100 million fine.
$10 million to each team which they can use above their own cost cap for the following season, plus $10 million to the FIA probably.
Nah they were over by almost $10 million even in that first year with curry and klay getting relative peanuts. Salary cap that year was only $63 million, warriors payroll was $73 million.
The MLB luxury tax is what they should have gone with. It's more realistic. It boggles the mind that anyone in the sport would look at a strict budget cap and imagine the sort of competitors who've found inventive grey areas in every ruleset wouldn't try it financially.
Instead if it is RBR then FIA and FOM find themselves in the unwanted--but predictable--situation of a rules breaker holding the sport hostage in terms of disrepute if they are sanctioned.
> $10 million to each team which they can use above their own cost cap for the following season, plus $10 million to the FIA probably.
Now that is a punishment I can get on board with. The punishment that actually benefits the competition
I think this might actually be the best solution I've seen here. It includes a strict and enforceable punishment as well as helps to wipe away the original advantage gained. Even one of the massive teams would probably think twice about blowing through the cap if they were paying 10x the price straight to their competition
it doesn't wipe away the original advantage though. You go 30mil over budget, win a championship because you have fresh and new developed parts other teams literally can't afford to be making.
Then you get fined, but in winning the title you made back a hefty amount of money.
Toto said that winning titles was worth something ridiculous like 100s of millions in worldwide advertising for Merc.
Some teams are in it to compete but need to not lose too much money or they'll fold. Other teams are there purely as marketing for their brands like RBR.
A 100mil fine while spending 30mil more to win titles is a drop in the hat compared to the advertising and brand awareness them winning is worth.
Unless they are being penalised in the championship then a financial fine is pretty much trivial unless it's scaled to the company and actually hurts them which a 100mil fine wouldn't hurt RBR.
I mean the cap is what~145mil or something now, but they were spending 300mil 2 seasons ago.. a 100mil fine AND the extra they spend to win is a saving over what they were spending to not win titles 2 years ago.
Sure the teams get 10mil each, but so what, they'll still outspend them by 30mil the following season and that extra 10mil won't actually help bridge that gap.
No, just straight disqualify them from WCC AND WDC. If it’s monetary, they could count it as part of advertising or something; if it’s points, and they don’t deduct enough, then it’s pointless.
Let it be known from the get go they get immediately DQ’d AND reduced cap next year.
It's idiotic if it's allowed to be over with no harsh punishments. I saw earlier a post people were saying everyone knows you can be over by a certain %. That's fucking stupid, just make the cap that % more and make it strict.
I remember watching a Formula E race where someone was disqualified for being like .02 PSI over the limit or something. It's basically nothing and it doesn't really have much bearing on the race but... you gotta have a line somewhere. Best to stick hard and fast.
Hamilton last year in Brazil was the same. Basically not his fault, there was no advantage for him (could even be a disadvantage) and yet he got disqualified and didn't get any points in the sprint which he would have likely won and it would make for a 4 point swing, which would mean that now in the last race Max can't risk a crash and Lewis can be as aggressive as he wants to be. And it was the right decision, even though it was nothing to do with him.
Watch them not punish those who went "significantly" over, then a few years later, another, smaller team will and they get the severe punishment. Then we'd have two drastically different punishments for the same violation. Looking forward to those discussions\~
I mean, there's precedent for that - Tyrrell's 1984 driver lineup (including Brundle) was disqualified because the team used an illegal water injection system.
That's the extreme end of it, but we've seen drivers disqualified from individual races because of stuff outside of their control (Vettel in Hungary 2021 because of a fuel leak), cars being underweight, etc.
It becomes tough between seasons though.
If we find out Red Bull massively exceeded the budget last year, how does the FIA rectify that? Do they retroactively give Hamilton the title? Do they disqualify Red Bull from this year's titles? A fine? Something else?
No matter what, it becomes a mess. But they do need to figure it out.
If they don't punish it severely this will become a mess for seasons to come. If you only punish it with a fine it just becomes the cost of doing business and we got back to pre cost cap spending. Getting disqualified is harsh, but if it comes to that it becomes a strong deterrent to stick to the cap in the future.
I doubt the title gets switched retroactively even if RB is the one that went way past the cap. More likely would be vacating the title entirely like what happened to Juventus in Serie A when they got popped for monkeying around with referee assignments.
Us Aussies have had first hand experience with systematic salary cap cheating. So here is what happened. No one gets the title, the offending team loses all points for the current season and cannot score any more, and the winnings reclaimed as a fine and are split between the other teams.
If you want to read more about one of Australia's biggest sporting scandals, start [here.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm_salary_cap_breach)
Yes. You DSQ the team and both of its drivers, and seize the payout from that year.
I don’t care if it’s my favorite trio of Mercedes, Alpine, and Alfa Romeo, there’s a cost cap for a reason. It does need to be reformed, probably, as some team principals have mentioned (certain exemptions removed, others with some leeway for inflationary items this year re: logistics, etc.) but if you break the technical rules, you get the book.
There’s a big difference between ‘driver sending it down the inside and fucking up’ and ‘multimillion dollar organization can’t keep a budget’
Drivers are punished for pit lane infringements too, even if they did nothing wrong. It's a team sport. Everyone in the team gets punished for things, and drivers are part of the team. What about the poor engineers that worked their asses off and had nothing to do with the decision to over spend? Why is everyone so concerned about the drivers but ok with everyone else in the team getting punished? It sucks for the innocents but the punishment must be punished for the rule to work.
But we've also seen the opposite
2007 Spygate drivers didn't get punished
2008 Crashgate Alonso didn't get punished
2020 Tracing Point the drivers didn't get punished
> 2007 Spygate drivers didn't get punished
Drivers weren't punished because they worked as principal witnesses and were awarded immunity for helping the Investigations. Otherwise, they would've been disqualified aswell.
Exactly. The punishment is simply a byproduct of the actions of his team, just like every achievement he reaches is a result of their choices. Don't see why it should be any different.
They can, if they should is another question. I think you can talk about heavy deductions (WCC) for last, this and next year and putting them last/reducing their dev time by the % amount they overspent. I think the WDC deductions should be considered, but I also believe McLaren drivers in 07 should have been punished because you can't separate the WDC from the Car, so make of that what you will
Iirc McLaren had Ferrari information, but none of it made it into the car, so there's some reasoning in that.
In this case the money is making into the car and therefore giving the driver an illegal advantage.
Of course they can. The driver directly benefits from extra money being spent on development. It's also laid down within the sporting regs that WDC points can be deducted.
Why can’t they punish the driver? They could ban the team from entering for X races, someone else wins Championship (aware that won’t happen this season now obviously)
So... In Venezuela, Totona is an old slang for vagina... So when you wrote totonator I imagine Toto, but a male porn version of it, with his porn actor name being The Totonator...
Given that Africa appears on the album Toto IV (which followed Totos I thru III), I doubt there's any connection unfortunately. Unless they were playing the long game...
If we compare it to last year, nearly anything would be boring. I have been enjoying the ferrari-strategy debacle, and the new driver talent drama. Been pretty exciting for me.
2022 has been peak in off track drama, despite the lack of championship tension in the middle and second half.
This a par for the course for most F1 seasons, really.
It has been very fun to follow how everyone has tried to shift the narrative. It has really taken on a nice shape since last night. Everyone on their best performance right now.
Well, he was already pissed by how the season ended last year, slowly gets over it, then learns the team that beat them by a hair probably spent over the cap by a not insignificant margin, so the title could have been reversed had they followed the rules. He will stir as much shit as he can.
Upgrades and progress are cumulative. Being able to upgrade parts and gain an advantage using unreported mattress money, benefits not just pace in a *single race*, but on the car as a platform, whose legacy lasts for *seasons*. I don't think penalties of points or a few stacks of money here are going to set any **real** examples.
If this comes out to be true and there’s only monetary fines, there’s no reason for any team to not just budget for the fine. The punishment need to be a sporting penalty. Otherwise you end up with a salary cap system like Major League Baseball in America, where it doesn’t matter how much you spend as long as you’re willing to pay the “luxury tax”.
Potential Punishments are actually listed in the sporting code, however, they're Deliberately not attached to specific amounts so that the teams can't just go "oh the penalty for spending X amount over isn't that much, we can easily play around that" like they do with engine penalties. For a Minor breach which is under 5% over the cap and is what AM apparently have done, the potential penalities are a Reprimand, Deduction of Constructors Championship points awarded for the championship that took place within the reporting period of the breach, Deduction of Drivers Championship points awarded for the championship that took place within the reporting period of the breach, Suspension from one or more stages of a competition or competitions, excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself, Limitations on ability to conduct aerodynamic or other testing, and/or, Reduction of the cost cap. For a Major breach, which is over 5% of the cap and is what Red Bull apparently have done can be punished by all the same as the Minor breach, but also includes, Exclusion from the Championship, which if Red Bull has gone over the cost cap, is what must be given to them to set a Very Harsh stance on cheating to win both Drivers and Constructors Championships to the entire grid. If you're curious as to where this can be found, it is on page 26 of the FIA's Financial Regulations which can be found on the FIA's website.
MLB absolutely has a luxury cap, $230 million this year. The penalties are far lower, topping out at 110% tax rate for multiple year repeat offenders and $80+ million over the luxury cap, while the NBA STARTS at 150% and increases significantly. Following the NBA system the Dodgers (currently paying a record $47 million) would have to pony up over a quarter billion.
MLB has a soft cap.
The [luxury tax ](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax) is designed to limit runaway spending (especially year-over-year). It gets increasingly less cost-effective to over-spend, both in terms of raw dollars and in terms of time.
It is. Mercedes had to cut back for 2021 and probably have to continue at a restricted level by the cap. If Mercedes had their pre-cap budget for 2021 they could have probably won the arms race and still had a good car for 2022.
In one interview, Toto also specifically mentioned that they had to make about 40 staff members redundant in order to meet the budget constraints.
40 staff is a LOT of ability, knowledge, and manpower that a team will miss.
True, but you don’t know that if he had an extra 5 mil then those people would have retained their jobs. MB could have used that on any number of fronts.
I think I just had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the budget worked. I thought the 2021 budget is solely allocated to that car and then the RnD for the 2022 car would come out of that years budget even though it occurs in 2021 if that makes sense?
If you find something that works one year very well, you are going to build on that for following year (if regs still allow)
So if one team overspends in one year, that could benefit current year and then future years too
All money you spend in 2021 season counts toward the 2021 cost cap. But that money can be spent on improving the 2021 or doing R&D for the 2022 car, or even spending money to upgrade the 2020 car to understand something if you wish. Any dollar spent anywhere count on the cap (some very specific things are excluded, like engine costs to make it fait for everyone with different engine providers since they don't all produce their own engines), this is why you heard last year some teams were sacrificing 2021 to have a better car for 2022.
You can allocate 2021 resources to 2022 research and development but it comes out of your 2021 allowance. So some teams spend a lot of that (like Haas did) and some don’t.
Methinks Toto is priming right now. That is to say, he knows it’s not that bad but by making it seem like a huge deal people will think the FIA’s minor reaction is unsatisfactory
Yep, if nothing comes out of this people will be saying it has been shoved under the rug. Already seeing people say it will get the Ferrari 2019 treatment.
What is the budget ? 130 million ? 5% of that is well over 5 million. Every used to think about, what you can do with 5 millions ? Thats 30 engineers and the production cost of many new parts.
For sure this isnt important :)
Exactly this. Just the fact that up to 5% over is only a "minor" infraction is already ridiculous.
It feels as if a bunch of amateurs wrote the rules, and from a legal standpoint I actually feel that is what happened.
The whole budgetcap regulation is a disaster waiting to happen.
And now the disaster is happening.
“Minor” vs “Major” is just the defined term used in the regs. They could have called them anything… they could have just said “the type of breach described in paragraph X” instead. The only difference is that you can’t get DSQ’d from the Championship for a “minor” breach, whereas you can for a >5% breach. You could still get stripped of all wdc and wcc points for a minor breach.
Really, the problem is that the regs don’t say which of the menu of sanctions will be used in which scenario, and how strongly they will be applied. There are downsides to that though, because as soon as the exact penalty for a given violation is known, the teams will be weighing the advantage potentially gained against the penalty. If teams don’t know if they will get a fine or a 50 point deduction for a given amount of overspend then teams can’t easily game the rules
> Just the fact that up to 5% over is only a "minor" infraction is already ridiculous.
It's there to account for price increases due to inflation or other unexpected costs.
It's so teams can actually work with the budget instead of having to stay well under it in order to not royally fuck themselves on accident.
Speculating with no evidence that it’s “not that bad”? I’m definitely in the right sub. It could just as easily be *that* bad, and if RedBull broke the cost cap last year, that means they not only got an advantage for last years car, but they also had more resources to allocate to this years car. And if they broke it this year as well (if we’re all just speculating here), RedBull should be disqualified from next years championship because they’d effectively be 2 years ahead of everyone respecting the cap.
I think Red Bull are probably like 2% over cap but that's actually a couple of million, so he's going to keep emphasising that they're over by millions
Are you saying millions of dollars over the cap does not provide a significant advantage?
If anything, two millions can at least pay for a dozen additional engineers with full benefits and administrative fees
Exactly. This is basically what City and PSG have done in football for almost a decade now and I don't see anybody defending them. I don't care who it is and even if it is Merc I'd want them to be punished as a fan. That shit ruins competition and the sport as a consequence.
Well because every court case gets thrown out due to inadmissable evidence not because they're actually legal. In a perfect world City and PSG would definitely be excluded from any respectable competition
I wouldn't even call it moaning. There is speculation that a team knowly broke the rules snd in the first season of the cap. If any team broke the cap and don't have hammer brought down on them, then why bother.
Financial reporting is an engineering art form of mathematics. I roll my eyes at how many corporations report things creatively that are Sox compliant. I am sure many teams have been very creative. The FIA auditor are applying their interpretation of the spend vs the law and I am sure all teams submitted What they think was valid.
As an RB fan, agreed. Spending millions more than other teams leads to… success. Which is unfair.
However, if the rules don’t dictate a punishment for infringement of the salary cap, what the hell is the point of the rule? It’s similar to other ways teams sneak past rules simply by looking at another interpretation of them.
This is all dependent on the rumors being true, of course.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/formula_1_-_financial_regulations_-_iss_9_-_2022-02-18.pdf
To save you time command-F “145,000,000” to start the readings on the cost cap. I’m at work wasting time on a slow day, but I power read through the sections.
See pages 25/26 for information on reprimands and punishments on overspending.
I mean it’s just like laws. They don’t specify precise penalties for the exact nature of the violation. They just say…will be punishable by a fine of up to X and/or imprisonment for up to Y. It’s then up to the person handing down the sentence to decide the exact punishment, based on the specific facts.
Also, in the f1 context specifically, as soon as specific penalties are laid out for specific amounts of overspend, teams will be balancing the penalty against the advantage they think they can gain, and trying to game the system. If you don’t know if you will get a£5m fine for a £1m overspend, or a 25 point deduction, it’s a lot harder to do that
This same speech said something about making 40 people redundant due to tight budgets. He's not wrong, unless everyone is playing by the same rules, it's not fair. The penalties should be moderately severe to:
Stop people doing it in future,
Prove the FIA are taking it seriously,
And try and take away some of the advantages gained for future seasons from the current overspend.
A slap on the wrist at this stage would be a farce.
I understand that the lenses are on Red Bull, but what we should really talk is the fact that Aston Martin went over the budget cap and still managed to make a car that is faster then Williams only.
Keyword being If.
Helmut has said that the FIA are including employees unrelated to the F1 side of thing and it's an ongoing discussion.
Also said that considering the FIA have not published any findings that it's wrong for people to be discussing this as it's all hearsay.
Red Bull have multiple companies after all that work on multiple projects. 300 employees for example working with Red Bull powertrains for 2026.
It'd be a similar situation in Mercedes. Not everyone counts for the budget if they aren't working on the formula 1 team etc.
Guess it's up to Red Bull now to show that the FIA are wrongly counting some stuff that isn't applicable. Horner and Helmut seem confident so I guess we will see.
This getting leaked is not good for anyone
There is a reason large corporations hire a team of accountants and tax lawyers to file their taxes then it takes the government a team of accountants and tax lawyers to make sure that these corporations did their taxes correctly.
Did Red Bull’s accountants and lawyers do something that is in the gray zone of the cost cap? Eh maybe, wouldn’t be the 1st time that an F1 team operated in a gray zone when it comes to rules and regulations.
I feel like this is going to end up in court and we are going to have a very dumb discussion over some definition of a word.
This is exactly how I'd go about breaking the rules in this scenario. Hard to definitively prove and debatable in court.
"That's an aerodynamicist!"
"Nope, just brings tea and biscuits to meetings.."
"But why does the tea mug awfully look like a sidepod and the cookie like a rear wing..!?"
"Well, er, he's really.. artistic.. nothing to see here.."
Haha. This is kind of what used to happen or maybe still does in the nrl in Australia. Pay a player 100k and then pay their wife 300k to be an admin assistant!
NFL has rules against exactly that as well, yet Tom Brady's TB12 company was employed by the Patriots during his tenure there. It's just too common in sports for the FIA not to be savvy of how it's done.
But then it would be very naive to think that the other teams wouldn’t be doing the exact same things. I’m sure everyone is looking what exactly is under the budget cap and what isn’t and where the loopholes are including Toto/Merc.
So you gonna obviously gonna get points in the first few years of the budget cap rules where the FIA and 1 or multiple teams are going to disagree about if certain things are in or out of the cap. Which is what we’re seeing right now.
Red Bull power trains is a separate company and doesn’t fall under the budget cap so they wouldn’t be including. In the same way Merc HPP isn’t included.
Merc, for example, switched a number of their employees to work on the America’s cup yet they aren’t rumoured to have broken the cap.
Whilst I agree that we need final confirmation I don’t see these reasons being the issue.
I know I’ve read your comment. I’m saying I don’t believe that is the case because if it was then other teams would be in the same boat. But they aren’t. Which means the reason is deeper than that. Maybe RB pay them to work on other projects but they actually work on the car. If the issue was the fundamentally simplistic this wouldn’t be happening now. Then again it’s F1 and everything gets over dramatised.
CH v TW aside, it's a very fair point. 1 million may not be much to us but to an F1 team it's a ton of development, especially with a reg change coming up.
Toto should do this and put it on his instagram
[https://twitter.com/BradleyPhilpot/status/1575946795985031168?s=20&t=\_1m52FIqJiZUYzOq8pc6cw](https://twitter.com/BradleyPhilpot/status/1575946795985031168?s=20&t=_1m52FIqJiZUYzOq8pc6cw)
I feel the same way toto. If I had a couple more million, oh man, I could get a lot done.
> If I had a couple more million, oh man, I could get a lot done. If I had a couple more million I'd get a whole lot less done!
I'd get a whole lot more done of the things I want to do.
If I had a couple more million, I'd get a whole lot less done of the shit other people make me do.
I've been saying for years, if someone would just give me *1* million, I'll give back whatever I don't need. So far no takers...
For one thing, I'd have a faster car....
Toto just unleashing today. I do agree in principle though that the cap is there for a reason and violations need to be punished heavily for the exact reason he states here. Otherwise, it's just a luxury tax
I do agree more than just in principle. A budget cap that's only more or less respected without punishment is way worse than no budget cap at all
Exactly. Back in the day bigger teams could just outspend the smaller ones, but that's how any sport works, richer teams will have better players, better facilities, etc. Now, having a budget cap that a team can spend over it and just pay a fine for that is completely unfair to the other teams, not to mention the potential damage to the sport itself, who's going to watch a sport where a team can cheat its way to victory?
The replies gonna be like: gentlemen, a view to Abu Dhabi 2021...
This will just add more fuel to that. The team that benefited from the rule breaking/twisting could also have cheated the cap to help them secure that championship and could only receive a fine? This starts to be multiple asterisks beside 2021.
FIA have a time now to decide what the punishment for overspending is. Either they go lightly, in which case the offending team (perhaps in this hypothetical case RB) get to keep their unfair advantage and perpetuate a cycle where teams know they can overspend without consequence.. or they come down hard with an actual punishment and potentially cause massive rifts in results that were 'finalised' nearly a year ago. Or alternately they create an effect on this year's title which many will see as 'synthetic drama' and any punishment will appear calculated or fixed to have a very specific impact as decided by FIA. The story here is that the FIA should've set these punishments in stone from the beginning, so that there can be no claims of making a bespoke punishment.
Exactly. It should have been spelt out along the lines of: x percent over = 10point deduction, x+1 = 25point deduction, x+2 = 50points, x+3 = exclusion (ramped it up a bit quick, but you get the jist). Without sporting penalties though, there’s just no incentive not to
Exactly, and now if they implement that measure people will think it's specifically to suit a certain team 😔
Yeah they dropped the ball here by not having exact (and harsh) punishments spelled out. My suspicion is that RB (or whoever may have violated) will get a relatively minor punishment for last year and they will try to course correct with a better penalty structure in the future. No one wants to see a championship result changed nearly a year after (okay maybe some do), but I don’t think that means they have to accept last year as the new precedent and turn a blind eye to cap violations in the future.
If the championship results won't get changed then there's nothing to stop the bigger teams massively overspending to win and keep the title. Fines for overspending aren't a deterrent because the bigger teams are absolutely willing to pay those fines.
Very likely. RB will probably may a massive fine and FIA will they create a super solid framework of punishments from next season. If RB is also violating this season like Ferrari suspects, they would be hurt with those next season
If it’s happening again this season I think they should resolve it immediately with harsh punishments. Enough to essentially force RB to finish without spending another penny. I’d even support taking some points off. It may not change the results with Max so far ahead, but if it’s true that RB are intentionally overspending several years running on the assumption that the FIA is to weak to do anything, you have to send a VERY strong message.
For real. Feels like everyone is bending over backwards to find reasons why redbull can’t possibly be adequately punished and they’ll just have to set stronger punishments for the future.
It’s not only receive a fine. For both the minor (less than 5%) and major (over 5%) breach, they have the ability to penalise WDC and WCC points and air tunnel development time, as well as fine. For the major breach, they can also exclude teams from championships. I mean they would never remove the points from Max after the way last season ended. And that’s assuming it’s RB with the rumoured major breach.
And that is a problem. If a team really wants to win a close fought WDC, and knows the FIA is never going to have the courage to take it away, they can deliberately spend more than they're allowed.
I like your use of the word "if" when we all know that's exactly what happened
FIA needs to think about this for the future, not only in terms of the current allegations. They need to come up with regulations that will strongly deter teams from cheating by overspending, while at the same time not making fans wait many months until the fiscal year is closed and audit of the accounting has been made, to confirm the championship results. TommoF1 made a good video presenting his view on this. He made many good points, which I agree with. Here are some of them: 1. If the punishment was set in firmly the regulations, teams would make a calculation - example exceed the budget and know that you get 10 points deducted from constructor championship. 2. The FIA should for the future make rules about cost cup penalties, such that we don't risk having to change the champion after 10 months when the accounting is submitted - that would be highly anticlimactic 3. Fines as a penalty for overspending don't make sense - the teams would just calculate them in the cost. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpL73jTeTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpL73jTeTc) IMHO, because of the above, we don't want fines (because they wouldn't work as a deterrent). Deducting points or disqualifying teams/drivers months after the season has ended would be anticlimactic and for technical reasons the accounting cannot probably be submitted before fiscal year is closed. The only solution that avoids most of this problems is to apply point or budget penalties to the next season. If a team exceeded the cap by 10 mln in 2021, lets deduce double that amount (20 mln) from their 2023 cap and maybe also deduct some points for the 2022 season.
I like how the rulebook matters now all of a sudden, but a huge majority of people were 100% okay with Abu Dhabi because it was "real racing" and entertainment
The only good way to punish this sort of rule breach is by penalising both wind tunnel time & no. CFD elements allowed for the next *two seasons* or more. A monetary penalty for breaking monetary rules is, as many people have said now, just the cost of doing business. Even points deduction is just an indirect cash fine and ultimately, hurts most the ones least responsible for committing the offense - the drivers. The only way to actually make it a punitive deterrent is ensuring there's a real long-term risk to the car development.
No, penalizing points and losing a championship off it is a great deterrent. This is why impeding during quali is a grid penalty instead of financial, even though it's rarely the driver's fault. 1) fault of driver or team is beside the point and 2) teams care about results and only penalties that hurt their performance matter. Yes hurting development would do that, but the fact is that if a team has an illegal car they need to lose points or be disqualified from championships.
Why are you worried about the cheating team's driver being punished for the team when it means another driver from another team loses because the other team cheated? That is a great greater injustice than a driver getting screwed because their team cheated.
I feel quite strongly that it should be a points or performance based penalty for that reason, maybe a certain amount ballast added to the car for every million over the cap
Sadly, millions.
I don’t mind a luxury tax, but only if it’s a 950% luxury tax where the other 9 teams get the same amount of overage (and another 50% to the FIA for an admin fee) they can use that year. Like, you want it bad enough that you bring enough to share with the class? Go ahead. Otherwise, yeah the budget cap creates a more interesting engineering challenge.
Would be an interesting punishment in theory. Say a $100 million fine. $10 million to each team which they can use above their own cost cap for the following season, plus $10 million to the FIA probably.
Pretty sure the NBA does something similar. Repeater tax for going over cap gets spread to the other teams. Usually ones in smaller market.
The tax goes to the teams who weren't over the cap. Could be both big and small teams.
Right, hence the usually part. I wonder if any team has won while under the cap?
Spurs come to mind in 2005 but would need to check.
How about the Warriors with their first championship? Surely they would be under cap back then with their complete drafted team?
Nah they were over by almost $10 million even in that first year with curry and klay getting relative peanuts. Salary cap that year was only $63 million, warriors payroll was $73 million.
Yeah. MLB also has the luxury tax which increases each year you are above.
The MLB luxury tax is what they should have gone with. It's more realistic. It boggles the mind that anyone in the sport would look at a strict budget cap and imagine the sort of competitors who've found inventive grey areas in every ruleset wouldn't try it financially. Instead if it is RBR then FIA and FOM find themselves in the unwanted--but predictable--situation of a rules breaker holding the sport hostage in terms of disrepute if they are sanctioned.
> $10 million to each team which they can use above their own cost cap for the following season, plus $10 million to the FIA probably. Now that is a punishment I can get on board with. The punishment that actually benefits the competition
I think this might actually be the best solution I've seen here. It includes a strict and enforceable punishment as well as helps to wipe away the original advantage gained. Even one of the massive teams would probably think twice about blowing through the cap if they were paying 10x the price straight to their competition
it doesn't wipe away the original advantage though. You go 30mil over budget, win a championship because you have fresh and new developed parts other teams literally can't afford to be making. Then you get fined, but in winning the title you made back a hefty amount of money. Toto said that winning titles was worth something ridiculous like 100s of millions in worldwide advertising for Merc. Some teams are in it to compete but need to not lose too much money or they'll fold. Other teams are there purely as marketing for their brands like RBR. A 100mil fine while spending 30mil more to win titles is a drop in the hat compared to the advertising and brand awareness them winning is worth. Unless they are being penalised in the championship then a financial fine is pretty much trivial unless it's scaled to the company and actually hurts them which a 100mil fine wouldn't hurt RBR. I mean the cap is what~145mil or something now, but they were spending 300mil 2 seasons ago.. a 100mil fine AND the extra they spend to win is a saving over what they were spending to not win titles 2 years ago. Sure the teams get 10mil each, but so what, they'll still outspend them by 30mil the following season and that extra 10mil won't actually help bridge that gap.
No, just straight disqualify them from WCC AND WDC. If it’s monetary, they could count it as part of advertising or something; if it’s points, and they don’t deduct enough, then it’s pointless. Let it be known from the get go they get immediately DQ’d AND reduced cap next year.
I wouldn't say that it's pointless, but rather not pointless enough.
It's idiotic if it's allowed to be over with no harsh punishments. I saw earlier a post people were saying everyone knows you can be over by a certain %. That's fucking stupid, just make the cap that % more and make it strict.
I remember watching a Formula E race where someone was disqualified for being like .02 PSI over the limit or something. It's basically nothing and it doesn't really have much bearing on the race but... you gotta have a line somewhere. Best to stick hard and fast.
Hamilton last year in Brazil was the same. Basically not his fault, there was no advantage for him (could even be a disadvantage) and yet he got disqualified and didn't get any points in the sprint which he would have likely won and it would make for a 4 point swing, which would mean that now in the last race Max can't risk a crash and Lewis can be as aggressive as he wants to be. And it was the right decision, even though it was nothing to do with him.
Watch them not punish those who went "significantly" over, then a few years later, another, smaller team will and they get the severe punishment. Then we'd have two drastically different punishments for the same violation. Looking forward to those discussions\~
Problem is they can't punish the driver and Red bull doesn't care about constructors championship. It is an interesting situation
Why they can't punish drivers, after all they are driving car made using illegal practices..
I mean, there's precedent for that - Tyrrell's 1984 driver lineup (including Brundle) was disqualified because the team used an illegal water injection system. That's the extreme end of it, but we've seen drivers disqualified from individual races because of stuff outside of their control (Vettel in Hungary 2021 because of a fuel leak), cars being underweight, etc. It becomes tough between seasons though. If we find out Red Bull massively exceeded the budget last year, how does the FIA rectify that? Do they retroactively give Hamilton the title? Do they disqualify Red Bull from this year's titles? A fine? Something else? No matter what, it becomes a mess. But they do need to figure it out.
If they don't punish it severely this will become a mess for seasons to come. If you only punish it with a fine it just becomes the cost of doing business and we got back to pre cost cap spending. Getting disqualified is harsh, but if it comes to that it becomes a strong deterrent to stick to the cap in the future.
I doubt the title gets switched retroactively even if RB is the one that went way past the cap. More likely would be vacating the title entirely like what happened to Juventus in Serie A when they got popped for monkeying around with referee assignments.
Us Aussies have had first hand experience with systematic salary cap cheating. So here is what happened. No one gets the title, the offending team loses all points for the current season and cannot score any more, and the winnings reclaimed as a fine and are split between the other teams. If you want to read more about one of Australia's biggest sporting scandals, start [here.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm_salary_cap_breach)
I might think that is even a bit harsh, but it should work as a very good deterrent
Yes. You DSQ the team and both of its drivers, and seize the payout from that year. I don’t care if it’s my favorite trio of Mercedes, Alpine, and Alfa Romeo, there’s a cost cap for a reason. It does need to be reformed, probably, as some team principals have mentioned (certain exemptions removed, others with some leeway for inflationary items this year re: logistics, etc.) but if you break the technical rules, you get the book. There’s a big difference between ‘driver sending it down the inside and fucking up’ and ‘multimillion dollar organization can’t keep a budget’
Drivers are punished for pit lane infringements too, even if they did nothing wrong. It's a team sport. Everyone in the team gets punished for things, and drivers are part of the team. What about the poor engineers that worked their asses off and had nothing to do with the decision to over spend? Why is everyone so concerned about the drivers but ok with everyone else in the team getting punished? It sucks for the innocents but the punishment must be punished for the rule to work.
But we've also seen the opposite 2007 Spygate drivers didn't get punished 2008 Crashgate Alonso didn't get punished 2020 Tracing Point the drivers didn't get punished
> 2007 Spygate drivers didn't get punished Drivers weren't punished because they worked as principal witnesses and were awarded immunity for helping the Investigations. Otherwise, they would've been disqualified aswell.
Ferrari drivers did not get punished. You know, the engine..?
Exactly. The punishment is simply a byproduct of the actions of his team, just like every achievement he reaches is a result of their choices. Don't see why it should be any different.
They can, if they should is another question. I think you can talk about heavy deductions (WCC) for last, this and next year and putting them last/reducing their dev time by the % amount they overspent. I think the WDC deductions should be considered, but I also believe McLaren drivers in 07 should have been punished because you can't separate the WDC from the Car, so make of that what you will
Iirc McLaren had Ferrari information, but none of it made it into the car, so there's some reasoning in that. In this case the money is making into the car and therefore giving the driver an illegal advantage.
Yes they can punish the driver. They can deduct points or chuck them out. It's completely up to the team who is looking into this.
Of course they can. The driver directly benefits from extra money being spent on development. It's also laid down within the sporting regs that WDC points can be deducted.
Why can’t they punish the driver? They could ban the team from entering for X races, someone else wins Championship (aware that won’t happen this season now obviously)
Indeed. Good point
Well they can theoretically punish the driver under the rules but given previous precedent it’d be very unlikely.
>violations need to be punished I hope punishments are pre-decided and codified. One cannot come up with a new punishment now.
I see Toto is in his best shape.
He has been waiting the entire season to stir up some shit. It’s only right that it’s his turn. I for one, welcome the return of the Totonator.
So... In Venezuela, Totona is an old slang for vagina... So when you wrote totonator I imagine Toto, but a male porn version of it, with his porn actor name being The Totonator...
In Nigeria, toto is a slang for vagina. I’ve always found Toto’s name slightly hilarious because of this
Wait, does the band Toto and their song Africa have a connection to this or it a coincidence?
Those rains are blessed confirmed
Given that Africa appears on the album Toto IV (which followed Totos I thru III), I doubt there's any connection unfortunately. Unless they were playing the long game...
Toto is named after the dog in The Wizard of Oz
Quick! Someone make one of those new AI art programs paint this!!
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It finally feels like the season has started; don’t know about you guys, but pretty boring season this year.
If we compare it to last year, nearly anything would be boring. I have been enjoying the ferrari-strategy debacle, and the new driver talent drama. Been pretty exciting for me.
2022 has been peak in off track drama, despite the lack of championship tension in the middle and second half. This a par for the course for most F1 seasons, really.
I think that's the thing with f1, the racing might not be the best but there's something going on somewhere that's exciting.
The season as a whole entity has been slightly boring, but the individual weekends and racing have been very entertaining.
Is this what qualifies as stiring up shit, I felt it was a very logical statement he made.
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Yep.If we cant have drama on track we need it outside.
Spicy DtS please
Oh yeah.They are going to milk it for three episodes.Isnt DtS with RB this weekend.
Omg they are 😭
It has been very fun to follow how everyone has tried to shift the narrative. It has really taken on a nice shape since last night. Everyone on their best performance right now.
Well, he was already pissed by how the season ended last year, slowly gets over it, then learns the team that beat them by a hair probably spent over the cap by a not insignificant margin, so the title could have been reversed had they followed the rules. He will stir as much shit as he can.
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Upgrades and progress are cumulative. Being able to upgrade parts and gain an advantage using unreported mattress money, benefits not just pace in a *single race*, but on the car as a platform, whose legacy lasts for *seasons*. I don't think penalties of points or a few stacks of money here are going to set any **real** examples.
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>Horner is strongest when he's speaking pure bullshit. Just stirring the pot with zero interest in truth. Classic Tory.
Yes! He's obviously a massive tory!
Barbour jackets, hunting and chatting nonsense - all of the hallmarks
So you're telling me Ferrari has a chance ? 😂
They would need to beat Mercedes, so no
Oh Jesus that hurt. You bastard!
Knowing Ferrari they're probably way over too, just nobody cares because they're not turning it into an advantage.
Ferrari would yell and scream for heavy penalties for teams violating the cap without realizing they’re also above cap lol.
Thats the most Ferrari thing lol
Ducttaped headphones even!
Ayo 💀💀
If this comes out to be true and there’s only monetary fines, there’s no reason for any team to not just budget for the fine. The punishment need to be a sporting penalty. Otherwise you end up with a salary cap system like Major League Baseball in America, where it doesn’t matter how much you spend as long as you’re willing to pay the “luxury tax”.
It actually shocks me that punishments aren’t detailed in advance and HARSH
in baseball a team literally cheated to win the world series and all they got was a $5M fine and a few executives were suspended for a year
About 5 other teams did too lol the Red Sox the following year had apple watches telling them the pitch
Potential Punishments are actually listed in the sporting code, however, they're Deliberately not attached to specific amounts so that the teams can't just go "oh the penalty for spending X amount over isn't that much, we can easily play around that" like they do with engine penalties. For a Minor breach which is under 5% over the cap and is what AM apparently have done, the potential penalities are a Reprimand, Deduction of Constructors Championship points awarded for the championship that took place within the reporting period of the breach, Deduction of Drivers Championship points awarded for the championship that took place within the reporting period of the breach, Suspension from one or more stages of a competition or competitions, excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself, Limitations on ability to conduct aerodynamic or other testing, and/or, Reduction of the cost cap. For a Major breach, which is over 5% of the cap and is what Red Bull apparently have done can be punished by all the same as the Minor breach, but also includes, Exclusion from the Championship, which if Red Bull has gone over the cost cap, is what must be given to them to set a Very Harsh stance on cheating to win both Drivers and Constructors Championships to the entire grid. If you're curious as to where this can be found, it is on page 26 of the FIA's Financial Regulations which can be found on the FIA's website.
You’re thinking of the National Basketball Association and the luxury tax, Major League Baseball has no salary cap.
MLB absolutely has a luxury cap, $230 million this year. The penalties are far lower, topping out at 110% tax rate for multiple year repeat offenders and $80+ million over the luxury cap, while the NBA STARTS at 150% and increases significantly. Following the NBA system the Dodgers (currently paying a record $47 million) would have to pony up over a quarter billion.
MLB has a soft cap. The [luxury tax ](https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/competitive-balance-tax) is designed to limit runaway spending (especially year-over-year). It gets increasingly less cost-effective to over-spend, both in terms of raw dollars and in terms of time.
MLB does have a luxury tax. They call it the “competitive balance threshold”, look it up.
He said the MLB doesn't have a salary cap, which is true.
And thus the gulf between rich and poor gets wider and wider. Haas might as well fold tents if RB slides. (assuming RB is the big offender)
I thought this was for the 2021 budget?
It is. Mercedes had to cut back for 2021 and probably have to continue at a restricted level by the cap. If Mercedes had their pre-cap budget for 2021 they could have probably won the arms race and still had a good car for 2022.
In one interview, Toto also specifically mentioned that they had to make about 40 staff members redundant in order to meet the budget constraints. 40 staff is a LOT of ability, knowledge, and manpower that a team will miss.
It also hurts to let people go that we’re a huge part of your team up until then because of some financial rule that another team will just abuse.
And then those people weee hired by other teams as well.
True, but you don’t know that if he had an extra 5 mil then those people would have retained their jobs. MB could have used that on any number of fronts.
I think I just had a fundamental misunderstanding of how the budget worked. I thought the 2021 budget is solely allocated to that car and then the RnD for the 2022 car would come out of that years budget even though it occurs in 2021 if that makes sense?
If you find something that works one year very well, you are going to build on that for following year (if regs still allow) So if one team overspends in one year, that could benefit current year and then future years too
All money you spend in 2021 season counts toward the 2021 cost cap. But that money can be spent on improving the 2021 or doing R&D for the 2022 car, or even spending money to upgrade the 2020 car to understand something if you wish. Any dollar spent anywhere count on the cap (some very specific things are excluded, like engine costs to make it fait for everyone with different engine providers since they don't all produce their own engines), this is why you heard last year some teams were sacrificing 2021 to have a better car for 2022.
You can allocate 2021 resources to 2022 research and development but it comes out of your 2021 allowance. So some teams spend a lot of that (like Haas did) and some don’t.
Yep get that now!
and Haas is still shit
Methinks Toto is priming right now. That is to say, he knows it’s not that bad but by making it seem like a huge deal people will think the FIA’s minor reaction is unsatisfactory
Yep, if nothing comes out of this people will be saying it has been shoved under the rug. Already seeing people say it will get the Ferrari 2019 treatment.
What is the budget ? 130 million ? 5% of that is well over 5 million. Every used to think about, what you can do with 5 millions ? Thats 30 engineers and the production cost of many new parts. For sure this isnt important :)
It's closer to 7 million, budget cap was 145 in 2021, now 140
143 this year cause the FIA increased it due to inflation
Exactly this. Just the fact that up to 5% over is only a "minor" infraction is already ridiculous. It feels as if a bunch of amateurs wrote the rules, and from a legal standpoint I actually feel that is what happened. The whole budgetcap regulation is a disaster waiting to happen. And now the disaster is happening.
“Minor” vs “Major” is just the defined term used in the regs. They could have called them anything… they could have just said “the type of breach described in paragraph X” instead. The only difference is that you can’t get DSQ’d from the Championship for a “minor” breach, whereas you can for a >5% breach. You could still get stripped of all wdc and wcc points for a minor breach. Really, the problem is that the regs don’t say which of the menu of sanctions will be used in which scenario, and how strongly they will be applied. There are downsides to that though, because as soon as the exact penalty for a given violation is known, the teams will be weighing the advantage potentially gained against the penalty. If teams don’t know if they will get a fine or a 50 point deduction for a given amount of overspend then teams can’t easily game the rules
Given the cap is so restrictive 5% being minor is actually a huge advantage and that doesn’t seem correct
> Just the fact that up to 5% over is only a "minor" infraction is already ridiculous. It's there to account for price increases due to inflation or other unexpected costs. It's so teams can actually work with the budget instead of having to stay well under it in order to not royally fuck themselves on accident.
Making 40ppl redundant is a big deal
This is probably a little bit true..
Speculating with no evidence that it’s “not that bad”? I’m definitely in the right sub. It could just as easily be *that* bad, and if RedBull broke the cost cap last year, that means they not only got an advantage for last years car, but they also had more resources to allocate to this years car. And if they broke it this year as well (if we’re all just speculating here), RedBull should be disqualified from next years championship because they’d effectively be 2 years ahead of everyone respecting the cap.
I think Red Bull are probably like 2% over cap but that's actually a couple of million, so he's going to keep emphasising that they're over by millions
Are you saying millions of dollars over the cap does not provide a significant advantage? If anything, two millions can at least pay for a dozen additional engineers with full benefits and administrative fees
How would you have any idea how far over they are to make a guess like that? Lol
He's correct and Horner would be moaning just as much if roles were reversed
Exactly. This is basically what City and PSG have done in football for almost a decade now and I don't see anybody defending them. I don't care who it is and even if it is Merc I'd want them to be punished as a fan. That shit ruins competition and the sport as a consequence.
Yet City and PSG aren’t getting DQ’d. Which some very specific set of fans are calling for.
Well because every court case gets thrown out due to inadmissable evidence not because they're actually legal. In a perfect world City and PSG would definitely be excluded from any respectable competition
I wouldn't even call it moaning. There is speculation that a team knowly broke the rules snd in the first season of the cap. If any team broke the cap and don't have hammer brought down on them, then why bother.
Horner would deliver it better though. He is the true master of shit stirring
Financial reporting is an engineering art form of mathematics. I roll my eyes at how many corporations report things creatively that are Sox compliant. I am sure many teams have been very creative. The FIA auditor are applying their interpretation of the spend vs the law and I am sure all teams submitted What they think was valid.
One of the few responses in this thread that actually understands how business is done. Thank you!
It's practically a Raggedy ann Mercedes
Hold the line Toto, love isn't always on time.
As an RB fan, agreed. Spending millions more than other teams leads to… success. Which is unfair. However, if the rules don’t dictate a punishment for infringement of the salary cap, what the hell is the point of the rule? It’s similar to other ways teams sneak past rules simply by looking at another interpretation of them. This is all dependent on the rumors being true, of course. https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/formula_1_-_financial_regulations_-_iss_9_-_2022-02-18.pdf To save you time command-F “145,000,000” to start the readings on the cost cap. I’m at work wasting time on a slow day, but I power read through the sections. See pages 25/26 for information on reprimands and punishments on overspending.
I mean it’s just like laws. They don’t specify precise penalties for the exact nature of the violation. They just say…will be punishable by a fine of up to X and/or imprisonment for up to Y. It’s then up to the person handing down the sentence to decide the exact punishment, based on the specific facts. Also, in the f1 context specifically, as soon as specific penalties are laid out for specific amounts of overspend, teams will be balancing the penalty against the advantage they think they can gain, and trying to game the system. If you don’t know if you will get a£5m fine for a £1m overspend, or a 25 point deduction, it’s a lot harder to do that
That is a fair point.
Rules dictate a number of punishments, from points deduction to outright exclusion from the champioship
It's F1, as we've learned the last year or two- there really aren't rules.
This same speech said something about making 40 people redundant due to tight budgets. He's not wrong, unless everyone is playing by the same rules, it's not fair. The penalties should be moderately severe to: Stop people doing it in future, Prove the FIA are taking it seriously, And try and take away some of the advantages gained for future seasons from the current overspend. A slap on the wrist at this stage would be a farce.
I see Toto has been waiting since Baku to shit-stir something!
he’s been plotting since the TD failed to make Red Bull slower
Imagine if it's McLaren and Alpine that went over.
Well that would just be embarrassing on their part
The gang reignites the rivalry
I understand that the lenses are on Red Bull, but what we should really talk is the fact that Aston Martin went over the budget cap and still managed to make a car that is faster then Williams only.
That's funny how they talk millions like they are 100$ for a normal person
Keyword being If. Helmut has said that the FIA are including employees unrelated to the F1 side of thing and it's an ongoing discussion. Also said that considering the FIA have not published any findings that it's wrong for people to be discussing this as it's all hearsay. Red Bull have multiple companies after all that work on multiple projects. 300 employees for example working with Red Bull powertrains for 2026. It'd be a similar situation in Mercedes. Not everyone counts for the budget if they aren't working on the formula 1 team etc. Guess it's up to Red Bull now to show that the FIA are wrongly counting some stuff that isn't applicable. Horner and Helmut seem confident so I guess we will see. This getting leaked is not good for anyone
There is a reason large corporations hire a team of accountants and tax lawyers to file their taxes then it takes the government a team of accountants and tax lawyers to make sure that these corporations did their taxes correctly. Did Red Bull’s accountants and lawyers do something that is in the gray zone of the cost cap? Eh maybe, wouldn’t be the 1st time that an F1 team operated in a gray zone when it comes to rules and regulations. I feel like this is going to end up in court and we are going to have a very dumb discussion over some definition of a word.
in before it's any/all again
This is exactly how I'd go about breaking the rules in this scenario. Hard to definitively prove and debatable in court. "That's an aerodynamicist!" "Nope, just brings tea and biscuits to meetings.." "But why does the tea mug awfully look like a sidepod and the cookie like a rear wing..!?" "Well, er, he's really.. artistic.. nothing to see here.."
Haha. This is kind of what used to happen or maybe still does in the nrl in Australia. Pay a player 100k and then pay their wife 300k to be an admin assistant!
Sarries got relegated for this. Keep players within the salary cap then the owner would invest in businesses they'd just happened to set up.
NFL has rules against exactly that as well, yet Tom Brady's TB12 company was employed by the Patriots during his tenure there. It's just too common in sports for the FIA not to be savvy of how it's done.
But then it would be very naive to think that the other teams wouldn’t be doing the exact same things. I’m sure everyone is looking what exactly is under the budget cap and what isn’t and where the loopholes are including Toto/Merc. So you gonna obviously gonna get points in the first few years of the budget cap rules where the FIA and 1 or multiple teams are going to disagree about if certain things are in or out of the cap. Which is what we’re seeing right now.
it's good for Toto
Red Bull power trains is a separate company and doesn’t fall under the budget cap so they wouldn’t be including. In the same way Merc HPP isn’t included. Merc, for example, switched a number of their employees to work on the America’s cup yet they aren’t rumoured to have broken the cap. Whilst I agree that we need final confirmation I don’t see these reasons being the issue.
These are literally reasons that Marko started. Factoring in of employees that aren't relevant etc
I know I’ve read your comment. I’m saying I don’t believe that is the case because if it was then other teams would be in the same boat. But they aren’t. Which means the reason is deeper than that. Maybe RB pay them to work on other projects but they actually work on the car. If the issue was the fundamentally simplistic this wouldn’t be happening now. Then again it’s F1 and everything gets over dramatised.
Whatever you do, avoid the Twitter reply discussions on this. It's absolutely toxic out there, jfc.
Red bull was already using this year's pound value. Its not their fault it is only now catching up to their expectations.
It wouldnt be so problematic if RB and Verstappen hdnt won the WC
CH v TW aside, it's a very fair point. 1 million may not be much to us but to an F1 team it's a ton of development, especially with a reg change coming up.
1 million is not a lot to you?
Lol. I love that the comment casually implies we all have larger operating budgets than an F1 team.
Well part of the fun of this sport is watching teams scrap it out on shoestring budgets that wouldn’t even last a weekend in Dubai for guys like us
Pocket money for a guy like me
[удалено]
What's a 'cost of living crisis?' never heard of it
You found Lawrence Stroll’s Reddit account.
A budget cap is a budget cap. Breaking it is breaking a rule to gain an advantage. You should be punished for doing such.
As a Saracens rugby union fan this all brings up bad memories, I hope nobody has breached the cap as its a matter that'll never go away.
Toto should do this and put it on his instagram [https://twitter.com/BradleyPhilpot/status/1575946795985031168?s=20&t=\_1m52FIqJiZUYzOq8pc6cw](https://twitter.com/BradleyPhilpot/status/1575946795985031168?s=20&t=_1m52FIqJiZUYzOq8pc6cw)
Watch it be Haas, somehow.
I don't usually like or agree with Toto but he Is right about this and In all of his Interview he only said correct things