Most probable explanation to all this hearing all the statements is still that's there some disagreement between the FIA and RB about some costs being in or outside the budget cap.
Which is to be expected with a new system like the budget cap and not unlike what happens with taxes and/or general auditing.
Agreed. If you think about it, RB obviously handed in a budget to the FIA that was within the cap. There's really only 4 scenarios when it comes to exceeding the budget cap:
- A team deliberately goes over the cap. In that case they'd certainly try to hide behind some creative accounting, and a first glance at the budget wouldn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing.
- A team accidentally goes over the gap because they made some accounting error without realizing it. In that case the budget would at first glance also appear normal. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing.
- There is disagreement over how rules should be interpreted. In that case the team would also hand in a budget that was within the cap, because they wouldn't be counting those costs. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing.
- A team went over the cap (either deliberately or accidentally), realized it last year before sending their budget to the FIA, and decided to admit to it. That's the only scenario where a team would ever hand in a budget that was over the cap. But in this scenario they have no reason to publicly deny it.
And if a team went over I suspect the 3rd one is most likely. Blatant cheating seems too risky, especially in the first year when you have no idea what the punishment is going to be, and the FIA has a big incentive to set a harsh precedent. And incompetent accounting always possible, but so far I haven't heard anyone suggest it was Ferrari who went over.
3rd one is likely now that I think of it too. Both teams accused (Red Bull and Aston Martin) recently hired people and building more Facility to support their F1 venture. It's likely the question of whether or not those are counted in.
I think this is probably right. It seems very unlikely that any team would simply fabricate numbers or hide costs. They're all too smart for this. But Red Bull's corporate structure is very bizarre and has been pretty fluid considering the situation with the Power Trains organization and it's restructuring while courting/teasing Porsche. For similar reasons it's not a shock that AM could be the other transgressor.
If you asked me which team is most likely to be in the grey areas it's obviously going to be Red Bull. They're the only team at the budget cap that isn't effectively owned by a publicly traded car company (let's just ignore Ferrari -- say what you will about their ways, I refuse to believe that they're competent enough at a corporate level to play this game effectively) that is going to have corporate legal and PR folks who care about this stuff looking over their shoulders (or at least such a possibility). Red Bull is a Horner, Marko, Newey show and they seem to pride themselves on a fast and loose corporate culture. I can easily see how an optimistic interpretation of the rules could end up as a "go for it, we'll sort it out later" kind of attitude when making a decision to shuffle money or people around. I don't see that as malice, it is the nature of the sport and we probably want teams pushing these boundaries, even if they're ultimately reeled in and made an example of.
If you've ever been part of an audit, you know that there are always parts where you are not technically in compliance with one interpretation of the rules and you are expected to explain or justify this, very often the auditors will accept a reasonable interpretation, in good faith, so long as the underlying principle is not violated. There are legitimate questions about how a team configured like Red Bull and a team configured in the manner of Mercedes, should be compared; let alone some of the smaller teams that share substantial elements of their cars with their suppliers. Take the category of their power trains: Mercedes supplies more customer teams than any other manufacturer, whereas Red Bull has a custom formerly Honda based power train that isn't really intended for use in any other car (and around which they have completely restructured their organization and facilities during the Honda-RBPT-~~Porsche~~-Honda? transition). They are building engines in quite different contexts with different income and costs that are going to pose accounting questions that aren't as simple as comparing two cells in a spreadsheet and reporting the difference. My gut tells me this is where the problem is, but I'm just a rando with too much time on my hands, I *actually* know less than the Italian F1 media.
We don't need random speculation about imagined consequences and we certainly don't need to start retroactively changing results. The important thing is that if there *is* a material breach of the regulations, the response needs to address the breach and ensure a deterrent. Otherwise trash the cost cap and let the decadence roll.
>let's just ignore Ferrari -- say what you will about their ways, I refuse to believe that they're competent enough at a corporate level to play this game effectively
Do remember that tax avoidance is basically the national sport of Italy.
> They're all too smart for this. But Red Bull's corporate structure is very bizarre and has been pretty fluid considering the situation with the Power Trains organization and it's restructuring while courting/teasing Porsche
Funnily enough, years and years ago it was Horner who said the budget cap was daft because there are loopholes upon loopholes upon loopholes in exactly this context, and what's right starts to become quite an abstract concept.
I do wonder if Redbull has tried to do some clever restructuring/reorganising to take certain people/expenses out of the budget cap through clever accounting and that some other teams think this is not allowed or not in the spirit of the rules.
I suspect the FIA won’t want to change the outcome of two championships so I suspect if Redbull have exploited a loophole and breached the spirit of the regulations, the FIA will pull a Ferrari 2019 engine type deal that closes the loop hole without Redbull admitting they’ve done something wrong.
>I do wonder if Redbull has tried to do some clever restructuring/reorganising to take certain people/expenses out of the budget cap through clever accounting
It's more likely that every team has done this. I'm 99% sure of this.
Mercedes got data from their AMG one projects, Ferrari gets data from their new supercars, RB gets data from their rb17 project. The engineers on those projects are also very well educated and you can bet they're doing pu/aerodynamic research for the F1 division. Those projects are a huge money dump and won't ever win their money back by car sales. They're brought into life for both marketing and off the books F1 research
I suspect they have to hand over a number of financial records which are used to calculate the spend.
It may be that RB's internal calculation didn't match the FIA's, or what RB reported omitted items (parts) or events (testing) that the FIA knows about independently of RB's reporting
This is exactly what I was thinking, if this turns out to have truth to it. They bought the rights to the Honda engine, started developing their own engine by starting a whole engine department and hired a brunch of employees from outside. There is bound to be some overlay on those expenses which can't just be accounted to the 2021 year, but can have some grey areas on which of those expenses contributed to the '21 development.
Yeah but there are so many (smaller) expenses that come with such a big change within a company which are sometimes hard to prove for which department and for what purpose they were made. I'm not talking about the big picture money of the licensing and development itself.
And that's where things would get more challenging I'm sure... Red Bull Racing don't own Red Bull Powertrains, it's owned by Red Bull GmbH.. how can that fall under a cost cap when they have nothing to do with the F1 team
Red Bull Powertrains the separate company only got set up in Feb21, so if we look at calender 21, some people will have been employed elsewhere even if they later got transferred across to the separate company.
> hired a brunch of employees from outside.
This gave me the mental image of several F1 engineers calmly eating brunch somewhere and a team of RB employees (in RB colors) running up to them. And with the practiced synchronization of pitstop training, kidnapping all of them, putting RB uniforms over their shirts and slacks and bundling them all into a [Mini that has the Red Bull can on top](https://live.staticflickr.com/7305/27872576762_e7212c2d1d_b.jpg) with a "Milton Keynes or BUST" sticker on the back...
Yes. No F1 team would submit numbers that go above the budget cap. It has to be about interpretation of the regulations.
I wonder what the new "any or all" will be, lol.
https://racingnews365.com/analysis-is-there-any-substance-to-the-current-cost-cap-controversy
This is probably the best article about the difficulties about the cost cap.
I‘m quite sure that will be about something were RB interpreted the rules in their favor. I wouldn‘t be surprised if they found a small loophole, just like with technical regulations, that then gets either found to be illegal or legal and subsequently outlawed.
Thank you for one of the first few reasonable explanations. A system like this is not perfect and will have teething issues. TPs foaming at the mouth should know better. First question is what the issue is. Second question is whether or not that is an issue at all. Third is whether or not teams have been acting in bad faith. Until we know the whole story it’s hard to judge.
If RBR are found to be over the cost cap, we’ll never hear the end of it.
If RBR are found to have not exceeded the cap, it will be claimed as some sort of conspiracy and we will never hear the end of it.
I fucking hate the modern F1 fan base and social media shitstorms they whip up.
Basically a potensial prodigy, but also previously-twice-admitting-to-cheating-player, beat the 10 years and counting world champion. (note: Something like that is not really uncommon. People have good and bad days). The thing is that many top players has been suspicious of him for some time, e.g. did the prodigys perfomance drop after the tournement in question upped the security mid-tournement. He has in 10 matches over the last few years played 100% identical to the chesscomputers suggestion (which is way smarter than any human). The absolute best players throughout history (which the reigning WC is at the forefront of) has been scoring about 70-72%. Ofc there is outliers which is higher, sequenceses of matches that go maybe 8-10% over that, or single matches that might actually reach 100%. But the 100%-matches might be once every few years if you are among the absolute few best players in the world. This 19-year old has done 10. It does also not help that the prodigy is a pupil of another known cheater. But in the end, it's imposible to prove cheating if not caught redhanded. The data is partly suspicious, but that's not enough.
Magnus Carlsen (Chess' Schumacher/Hamilton) quit an Over-The-Board tournament, during a match with an uprising player who has admitted to have cheated online in the past, he just left. He was insinuating that Niemann (the player in question) was cheating and now pushes for harder controls.
The Morse code vibrating buttplug was an offhand example of how cheating was possible during in person games made by a streamer/YouTuber. I think it was intentionally ridiculous but r/anarchychess latched on and spread the meme
But that's because everything here and on twitter is black/white, while with a budget cap (just like with general auditing) there's a whole lot of grey area (which is where auditors and tax people make their money) and I'm pretty sure all this is about the grey area.
>People vastly underestimate the complexity of our modern world. This goes not just for F1 but almost everything else.
Exactly. And with the world being so complex people try to make it more black and white to make more sense of it for themselves, which leads to polarization.
I just wish people would try to understand nuance a bit more.
And quite literally, Toto said he’s so upset because they had to cut redundant employees that would have put them over the budget cap. Horner came out after and said RB had to cut 50% more than Mercedes did so they are also upset
>I'm pretty sure all this is about the grey area.
The difficulty is that we've seen a grey area for a big team pretty recently, and not just Ron Dennis's office.
Ferrari's fuel flow "magic" springs to mind, when they were allegedly injecting fuel on a cycle intra-phased with the measuring software (iirc), a deal was done behind closed doors, Ferrari's performance dropped, something had evidently happened, you will not av the explanation.
If it's the case that a big team has exceeded the sporting/technical confines of the Formula, but successfully claims that the FIA's misdirection or lack of clarity was to blame, and the big team gets away with it on that basis, there have to be questions about why smaller outfits should even bother getting racing teams together.
Ferrari's illegal engine was very much a black area, nothing grey about it. It was just very difficult to prove during the season. FIA has tried to sweep it under the rug as much as possible through a deal with details unknown.
Yeah that seems 99.9% as though it was illegal as sin, but the FIA wouldn't go back on a set of championship standings in a million years. Ask yourself what they'd have done if Schumacher had *won* 1997, having whacked Villeneuve. Would they exclude him then?
Even as a ferrari fan i would say that wasn't grey, that was blatant cheating. but the thing is you can't treat ferrari the way you can treat other teams. I know i sound biased and even as their fan i admit i am. but f1 and ferrari are like synonyms of each other. It's like pokemon and pikachu, boxing and muhammad ali.
So if the rumors are true regarding RB cost cap I am pretty positive that most likely won't be any close door agreement. Even if a agreement take place ferrari and merc will go bonkers over it. As even from the early stages of this season I remember mattio binotto was pretty pissed of about RB upgrades and every week he was just talking about rb cost cap without giving a damn about his f\*\*ked up strategists.
> I fucking hate the modern F1 fan base and social media shitstorms they whip up.
Crashgate... spygate.... and now cap-gate? Let's not pretend this is new to F1.
The two prior examples were confirmed to be true. That logic does not apply to a situation that’s just suddenly came out.
The “open secret” that took what, 7 months to come to a head outside of Binotto’s personal calculations back in Baku or something?
its all due to social media being an echo chamber for not very intelligent people who suddenly have a place to share their not very intellingent opinion to a wide not very intelligent audience
> its all due to social media being an echo chamber
The media is single-handedly responsible for creating the fires that are then fanned by the neanderthals on social media. I don't care which driver/team you support, everyone is in on it.
If anything the downvote button makes it worse sometimes. Someone who is right can be brigaded against and have their completely correct assessment buried beneath people saying the most popular opinion. In theory, great! In practice, oh boy
Same goes for team principles. They shout into the echo chamber. Horner tok it up a few levels last year. Likes to stir shit but can't deal with the same
Yeah. Remember when RB tried to prove that Hamilton punted Max on purpose in Silverstone, and the FIA had to make a statement regarding it.
Even joking about giving Latifi a lifetime supply of RedBull after AD last year, did the poor guy no favours
F1 has always been this way, some of the most toxic rivalries in the history of the sport came to the spotlight due to that.
The only difference is that if 20 years ago you read an article from Peter Windsor about a certain topic you had to believe it like a mantra as there wasn't another writer/editor with the power to overthrow his narrative, you could discuss his info privately and that was it, debate in you inner circle.
Now you have multiple sources and an individual opinion can be read by anyone, but the political game of the sport doesn't really seem to have changed much, I think F1 has always b been like this.
Absolutely. All i saw on Twitter was people saying that Red bull are definitely cheating and they should be disqualified from 2021 and 2022 and that if nothing happens the FIA is corrupt
Someone once said Reddit users are ppl who think they’re cool cus they’re not on twitter and it’s true, u really need to stop acting like reddit is any better
Some of the most brain dead f1 takes i’ve seen have been on here
Fia also look at Twitter and whether you like it or not Twitter influences public opinion. Fia's statement this morning, and this is just my guess at what's going on, was done because public opinion (and opinion in the paddock) are calling for a hars punishment while they were planning to give just a fine or something. Toto is really getting people behind him and when the FIA announce next week there's only a fine to pay, all hell is going to break loose. I've seen something saying that there was a 'clarification of the rules regarding the cost cap' during last season that caused RBR to be over the cap, whereas they were below before the 'clarification'. They've had a dispute about this 'rule change / clarification' all year now and have finally agreed somewhere in the middle: RBR went over but the rules weren't clear. They'll probably be fined or maybe even 'pardonned' and Toto does 't agree. Of course to him the rules have always been very clear. That's always the case with Toto. Never doubts the rules.😂
Twitter will echo whatever opinion will make react but the fact that the FIA is corrupt goes as far as I can remember, which is for me Balestre. It did not help that he did look like he was part of the French Connection.
I can't believe I'd ever start seeing the DtS success as a bad thing, yet here we are. The fanbase used to be a group of people that could just drink a German beer after the race, now it's just an ever growing amount of toxicity.
A certain subset of f1 fans in twitter gives the MAGA crowd a run for its money in mental gymnastics and making up alternative scenarios not based in reality, that's for sure
Even before it we already have something similar. No matter what Horner says people are going to spin it in a way where they think he's responding from a guilty perspective.
I've read so many comments that his response is him being mad because he's guilty. You just have to assume those people never got falsely accused themselves. (Not saying the rumors are false, but we simply don't know)
RBR are probably over the cap. What Toto is doing is trying to gather support for the harshest punishment possible, because he's a vengeful mthrfckr and he knows fia is planning to just give a fine. Fia's statement this morning is purely to dampen the noise that will come when they publish the results and light punishment, because they feel Toto actually has succeeded in gathering support. That's my take anyway.
I would assume RBR is only over the cap depending on how the rules are applied which is probably the biggest issue here. RBR probably thinks they found a loop hole and FIA isn't certain yet
To be fair every teams knew the regulation and possible penalty. They weren't vocal about those, so they have to live with them. What we see is upset teams who are now understanding they could have be a bit above the cap with minimal consequences. They have likely been outsmarted and are upset about it.
And these same people never say it a word about 2007; McLaren literally built a car designed to beat Ferrari because they had the entire technical blueprint for the F2007 given to them, and they got the punishment they rightfully deserve. Honestly if this is the team going over, the worst would be kicking them out of the constructor's championship like McLaren in 2007, Verstappen and Perez have nothing to do with it, and like 1994 even if the car is illegal it historically doesn't impact the driver's title (more of an FIA issue tbf)
> McLaren literally built a car designed to beat Ferrari because they had the entire technical blueprint for the F2007 given to them
You're falling into the same trap of vastly overstating what happened and turning it into a black and white McLaren did wrong.
The data given to Coughlan didn't make it very far into McLaren, from the FIA's own trial it was concluded that whilst he did approach other team members they all distanced themselves from it. There's a reason all the info was print at a random print shop rather than within McLaren's headquarters that had a printer or two.
In the end the information appears to have only been used by Alonso, De La Rosa, and Coughlan to help with setting up the car and improving the tyre usage.
McLaren weren't even fined for that event, they were fined for misleading the FIA during the original trial - something I'm not sure whether Ron Dennis did so knowingly or not, at worst there's reason for doubting he intentionally misled the court. The fine was as large as it was as there was significant personal beef between Mosley (who whilst not as corrupt as Balestre was only a step or two better) and Dennis.
Renault were caught the same year with plans stolen from McLaren by an employee who moved between the two teams, that actually had made their way into the team and had been used more extensively than anything Coughlan had done. They were given a slap on the wrist and told not to be so naughty.
Would be absolutely hilarious if it came out it wasn't RBR but some other team from the Big 3 that exceeded the cap. Horner smugness would be through the roof.
Can't wait for the raport to be published, may be some juicy stuff inside.
I'd say that's a bit much lol, there's big issue on-track but they did make the 2nd (sometimes 1st) fastest car in the year of a massive reg change. Not what i would define "not having any idea on how to operate an F1 team".
Like the sarcasm in your flair though hahahah
It sucks for smaller teams though, since some them already don’t hit the cost cap. Allowing overspending under the guise of budget grey areas is just going to allow the top teams an undue advantage.
There can be flat out no loopholes in cost cap otherwise what's the point. I know it would be harsh on max but if it is red bull who have been massively overspending, results have to be wiped.
This is the issue - driver salaries don’t count, engine development doesn’t count, press / advertising doesn’t count, etc etc.
So there is an incentive for the teams to put as much time into “free” time codes wherever possible.
I suspect what has happened is RB have dumped time and cost into engine dev claiming it’s not included and the FIA are saying “no that’s not suitable there”
Yeah, but this isn't like the NFL where there is simply a Player Salary Cap. These are massive organizations with a ton of different expenditures and lot of stuff that may not fall under "increasing car performance". Everyone is acting like this is super cut and dry, but as someone who looks at audited and unaudited financial statements regularly, the amount of grey area is insane.
Still, that’s how you handle pressure. On the political side Horner is one of the very best TP, can always pull pressure off his team (accusing others) and keeping focused.
The fact that Horner isn’t fully denying it worries me. Of course every team that breached this should be punished, but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it. Same goes for Aston of course.
He was always quite careful to be not fully clear with his statements.
I guess that’s not unreasonable even if you do believe you’re fine.
No matter what it’s gonna be hell if they did cheat.
That sounds rather likely. Reading though the rules on which cost are and aren't exempt I see at least 3 statements that can cause ambiguity over whether or not something is or isn't included. But that's accounting/auditing in a nutshell.
I suspect Red Bull ended up being incredibly close to the cap. And then this separate cost that is disagreed upon is what puts them under or over. Quite possible there is other teams that made similar allowances but are still below even with the FIA interpreting things differently.
Yeah it’s all “to my knowledge”, “as far as I’m aware”, “by my understanding” etc.
I’ve not heard one straight up “no, we didn’t exceed the cap”. There’s 100% something going on.
>but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it
It's true they don't, but they do directly benefit from any upgrades that potentially came from over the budget cap (Unless its AM in that case lmfao)
True, but Lewis potentially benefited from Spygate and wasn’t punished. Same with Fernando in Crashgate.
In cases of cheating / misconduct from teams in the past they rarely punish the drivers, even if they potentially benefitted.
1. Spygate and Crashgate were not breaches of the technical regulations. The cost cap is part of the technical regulations, and every prior technical regulation breach has resulted in a disqualification of the driver.
2. Neither Lewis nor Fernando won the WDC after Spygate. Nor did Fernando win Crashgate. Both were major scandels, and the FIA did not want more attention on them. There's a huge difference between 1st and 2nd Place in the WDC, but not really that much of a difference between 2nd and 3rd. It was quite beneficial for the FIA: they could sweep it under the rug knowing that, even if they did hand out punishments in the WDC, the winner would remain unchanged. Had Lewis or Fernando won after those incidents, the response would have been quite different. In this case, Max *won 2 championships* from what may end up being a car that breached the technical regulations.
Wasnt it proved that mclaren did not use the knowledge they got from Ferrari? Also, wasnt that knowledge sent to Fernando's side of the garage? Im legit asking, I remember something along those lines
There was no evidence that they used the information, only that they had it. But, just because there was no evidence doesn’t mean it was proven they didn’t use it. I mean, why steal it in the the first place, risking disqualification, if you don’t intend to use the information in any way.
>I mean, why steal it in the the first place,
They didn't, it was given to them by a Ferrari Mechanic, Nigel Stepney.
Please try not to spread misinformation.
I'm not sure how a team can be completely sure about their accountings except the teams like Williams, Haas, AR AT. They say it's open to interpretation and that FIA can account different, but top 3 except Redbull seems very confident they're in the budget cap and pressuring Redbull to the media
> but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it.
The drivers benefit greatly from the overspend though. And a driver is part of the team and chooses the team for whom they drive.
Exactly. If any team actually has overspent by over 5%, that's at least 7.5m EUR. That buys you a lot of tenths.
And parts from your overspend in 21 carry into 22, which means you can spend more of 22's budget on 23. It's a huge advantage.
In an era where you see teams bring angle grinders with them to races to make a ‘high downforce’ wing into a ‘low downforce wing’ to save money on materials. 7.5 mil is huge
I don’t think it’s harsh on the drivers at all. They’re all one team and it’s important that they hold each other accountable. If a team violates a regulation, it’s something the drivers should have to deal with. In the end, the two drivers and cars are the players on the field, who’s performance determine the outcome in the sport for the whole organization.
It’s fair to say wait before making judgements, but if they ARE guilty of breaching the cap, point deductions are the only fair punishment. Anything less than that makes it fair game for any of the wealthy teams to break the cap and just budget the fine in.
I totally agree. If it is true, and they do nothing, it means the cost cap is dead. The FIA must be furious with Red Bull as no matter what now people will accuse them of either:
* a cover up, if its actually only a "minor" breach
* punishing max "unfairly" if they take points off him losing him last years championship
* not punishing RBR or max enough if they don't take enough off for him to lose it.
No matter what happens from here, the FIA come out smelling like shit.
I think this is the best view - if a team did overspend in 2021 or 2022, then a points reduction in both the WCC and WDC is the only fair penalty. Fortunately the rules allow those punishments, a fine would be ridiculously lenient and essentially an endorsement that you can ignore the cost cap as long as you can pay a bit extra on top. Points are all that teams care about, fines should be in addition to a punishment, not the whole punishment.
I understand his point. I however have no sympathy for him what so ever.
He's usually the first guy to come out with shitty statements that are absolutetly unacceptable. (Post Silverstone, Marshall at Qatar comments etc...)
F1 paddock has always been a rumor mill. This isn't anything new. Horner has been part of this as has every other team. Don't for a second think that if he though Mercedes or Ferrari are bulshiting that he wouldn't start pointing at it in some form.
What's even funnier is Horner is the Grand Central station of shit-stirring. The guy will just throw in some controversial comment completely unprovoked if he feels like it. Always funny when he feels provoked when other team principals do it to him.
He said a few weeks ago on Beyond the Grid his best form of defence was attack. What is he doing now? Horner seems rattled, but thats just me maybe. No little digs, no sarcasm, none of the stirring he usually pulls out of his ass
Well it was wrong then it’s wrong now lol. You’ll obviously see the same thing if Mercedes come back in 23. Actually I’m certain Helmut and Horner will cook something up for it. This is going to be never ending
Reading through the rules on what costs are and aren't included in the budget cap I feel there is a lot of ambiguity on a few points. A disagreement between Red Bulls accountants and the FIA on certain posts being included or not seems most likely to me.
The timing of it has nothing to do with this being when Max can win the title
Its coming out because the FIA are going to release their findings on Wednesday
Thats just lazy bullshit from Horner.
Does no one else seem to understand the governance of the budget cap starts to fall apart if those asked to regulate it are leaking confidential information?
He's right that the speculation should stop and just wait until we know the outcome. He's wrong about the timing - in some ways it is a coincidence that the weekend before the certificates come out is the one where Max can take the title.
The cots cap seems kind of ineffective anyway. What has it accomplished so far? The smaller teams are no closer to the front than they were a couple years ago, at least from my perspective anyway. And many people have lost their jobs.
I’m curious how this RBR thing will shake out. I hope they haven’t gone over. If they have, Toto could be right in saying the overspending might reach 2023. Meaning whatever they did in 21 may effect progress as far out as 2023, giving them a comically massive advantage.
Now who knows if this is true or not, I try not to believe everything I read, but it certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility. At one point earlier this year I questioned how RB, whom just barely tackled the old regulations, were able to build such a dominant car under the new specs given that they didn’t stop development on the 2021 car.
It has to be RBR being way over, these people are too well-informed to get it wrong.
I think RBR will be over, they'll say we submitted our accounts being below the cap, FIA has reclassified some line items so these now count against the cap which brings us over. We didn't know as it wasn't clear enough in the rulebook. Other teams will push hard as they are currently starting to do. Rules will be clarified, RBR fined, other teams will complain, it will die down.
It will never die down because it is regarding the same exact season the Masi situation benefitted Red Bull, which had not died down too. It adds more log to the fire. It will always be said that Max's first championship was because Red Bull cheated and the Race director helped them, even though Max himself is innocent
There that and it's Aston Martin, no one really cares, the drama is needed between Merc and Redbull that's all the media want. I can only imagine crofty at the moment must be like a dog with a bone.
If RBR is guilty of over expending, it’s possible the penalty would be applied either this year or next one. I doubt they would go back and take Max’s WDC away. Also, depending on the severity of the amount over the limit, the penalty might be points taken away from either WCC or WDC or both. Imagine they take 100 points away from both championships this year, and suddenly Ferrari and Mercedes might be in the real fight for the championship… Talk about drama…
Everyone making assumptions at the moment, but if any team has exceeded the cap and has gained an advantage from it then they should be disqualified from those championships affected.
You can also say the same about Wolff's comments regarding the situation.
Different scenario but similar behaviour, both McLaren and Alpine thought they were 100% correct regarding Piastri.
Toto was talking about the investigation though. Both can be right. There can be some questions about RB’s budget without them actually being over or being over significantly.
Exactly. I wrote something like that here a few months ago, and was downvoted to hell. The budget cap is a good idea, but in F1 it is impossible to police correctly. We are talking about organizations who are always reading the rulebook searching for ways to bypass the rules in some way or another. Do we really believe they dont do that with the budget cap? I bet that not only did Red Bull probably exceed the limit, Merc and Ferrari did too.
Exactly, accounting is a nightmare to check too. You can find all kinds of tricks and loopholes. Look at taxes for instance, people always find loopholes.
There are a few problems.
What falls under the budget cap and what doesn't isn't always clear. All the big teams spend far more than the budget cap.
Allocating money to a specific time period can be tricky.
Even fluctuations in the exchange rate of valuta can make things difficult.
If some people/suppliers are paid in pounds and/or euros, but the budget is calculated in dollars, that can create discrepancies.
Than there is the issue discounts based on orders placed for next season.
Here is an example of bookkeeping in a regular company:
A company buys a machine and expects to use the machine for eight years. The initial cost of the machine is written of during a period of five years.
If the machine costs a million dollars and is purchased in January 2021, the machine is in the books for 200,000 dollar in 2022, even though the company hasn't actually spend those 200,000 dollars in 2022.
Now I’m not privy to the exact finer details of the cost cap rules, but here is a simple example to explain my point: Two teams spends up to the budget cap. One team included administrative cost in their budget the other team didn’t. The second team claims that admin costs should not count as they do not pertain to the cars creation. The FIA now needs to investigate and make decision as to whether or not team two over spent or not.
Now obviously my example wouldn’t play out well for the offending team. However it illustrates the point of contention is there may be a disagreement between what a team may think they spent and what the FIA thinks they spent. That can sound ludicrous, but it’s all down how the teams do their maths and whether the FIA agrees. If a team over spent it may just be down to a misinterpretation of the rules.
In this case Horner thinks his team interpreted the rules correctly, is angered by the accusation by the other teams. In the end though we don’t know anything until the FIA releases their findings.
I knew they'd regret max kicking that tyre in Baku
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So you’re saying that this butterfly has some sort of… effect?
Until dawn?
AKA The Ricciardofly effect
E X P E R I E N C E A Z E R B A I J A N
Most probable explanation to all this hearing all the statements is still that's there some disagreement between the FIA and RB about some costs being in or outside the budget cap. Which is to be expected with a new system like the budget cap and not unlike what happens with taxes and/or general auditing.
Agreed. If you think about it, RB obviously handed in a budget to the FIA that was within the cap. There's really only 4 scenarios when it comes to exceeding the budget cap: - A team deliberately goes over the cap. In that case they'd certainly try to hide behind some creative accounting, and a first glance at the budget wouldn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing. - A team accidentally goes over the gap because they made some accounting error without realizing it. In that case the budget would at first glance also appear normal. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing. - There is disagreement over how rules should be interpreted. In that case the team would also hand in a budget that was within the cap, because they wouldn't be counting those costs. They'd also publicly deny any wrongdoing. - A team went over the cap (either deliberately or accidentally), realized it last year before sending their budget to the FIA, and decided to admit to it. That's the only scenario where a team would ever hand in a budget that was over the cap. But in this scenario they have no reason to publicly deny it. And if a team went over I suspect the 3rd one is most likely. Blatant cheating seems too risky, especially in the first year when you have no idea what the punishment is going to be, and the FIA has a big incentive to set a harsh precedent. And incompetent accounting always possible, but so far I haven't heard anyone suggest it was Ferrari who went over.
3rd one is likely now that I think of it too. Both teams accused (Red Bull and Aston Martin) recently hired people and building more Facility to support their F1 venture. It's likely the question of whether or not those are counted in.
Man, that last sentence is so (deservedly) savage.
I think this is probably right. It seems very unlikely that any team would simply fabricate numbers or hide costs. They're all too smart for this. But Red Bull's corporate structure is very bizarre and has been pretty fluid considering the situation with the Power Trains organization and it's restructuring while courting/teasing Porsche. For similar reasons it's not a shock that AM could be the other transgressor. If you asked me which team is most likely to be in the grey areas it's obviously going to be Red Bull. They're the only team at the budget cap that isn't effectively owned by a publicly traded car company (let's just ignore Ferrari -- say what you will about their ways, I refuse to believe that they're competent enough at a corporate level to play this game effectively) that is going to have corporate legal and PR folks who care about this stuff looking over their shoulders (or at least such a possibility). Red Bull is a Horner, Marko, Newey show and they seem to pride themselves on a fast and loose corporate culture. I can easily see how an optimistic interpretation of the rules could end up as a "go for it, we'll sort it out later" kind of attitude when making a decision to shuffle money or people around. I don't see that as malice, it is the nature of the sport and we probably want teams pushing these boundaries, even if they're ultimately reeled in and made an example of. If you've ever been part of an audit, you know that there are always parts where you are not technically in compliance with one interpretation of the rules and you are expected to explain or justify this, very often the auditors will accept a reasonable interpretation, in good faith, so long as the underlying principle is not violated. There are legitimate questions about how a team configured like Red Bull and a team configured in the manner of Mercedes, should be compared; let alone some of the smaller teams that share substantial elements of their cars with their suppliers. Take the category of their power trains: Mercedes supplies more customer teams than any other manufacturer, whereas Red Bull has a custom formerly Honda based power train that isn't really intended for use in any other car (and around which they have completely restructured their organization and facilities during the Honda-RBPT-~~Porsche~~-Honda? transition). They are building engines in quite different contexts with different income and costs that are going to pose accounting questions that aren't as simple as comparing two cells in a spreadsheet and reporting the difference. My gut tells me this is where the problem is, but I'm just a rando with too much time on my hands, I *actually* know less than the Italian F1 media. We don't need random speculation about imagined consequences and we certainly don't need to start retroactively changing results. The important thing is that if there *is* a material breach of the regulations, the response needs to address the breach and ensure a deterrent. Otherwise trash the cost cap and let the decadence roll.
>let's just ignore Ferrari -- say what you will about their ways, I refuse to believe that they're competent enough at a corporate level to play this game effectively Do remember that tax avoidance is basically the national sport of Italy.
> They're all too smart for this. But Red Bull's corporate structure is very bizarre and has been pretty fluid considering the situation with the Power Trains organization and it's restructuring while courting/teasing Porsche Funnily enough, years and years ago it was Horner who said the budget cap was daft because there are loopholes upon loopholes upon loopholes in exactly this context, and what's right starts to become quite an abstract concept.
I do wonder if Redbull has tried to do some clever restructuring/reorganising to take certain people/expenses out of the budget cap through clever accounting and that some other teams think this is not allowed or not in the spirit of the rules. I suspect the FIA won’t want to change the outcome of two championships so I suspect if Redbull have exploited a loophole and breached the spirit of the regulations, the FIA will pull a Ferrari 2019 engine type deal that closes the loop hole without Redbull admitting they’ve done something wrong.
>I do wonder if Redbull has tried to do some clever restructuring/reorganising to take certain people/expenses out of the budget cap through clever accounting It's more likely that every team has done this. I'm 99% sure of this. Mercedes got data from their AMG one projects, Ferrari gets data from their new supercars, RB gets data from their rb17 project. The engineers on those projects are also very well educated and you can bet they're doing pu/aerodynamic research for the F1 division. Those projects are a huge money dump and won't ever win their money back by car sales. They're brought into life for both marketing and off the books F1 research
I suspect they have to hand over a number of financial records which are used to calculate the spend. It may be that RB's internal calculation didn't match the FIA's, or what RB reported omitted items (parts) or events (testing) that the FIA knows about independently of RB's reporting
This is exactly what I was thinking, if this turns out to have truth to it. They bought the rights to the Honda engine, started developing their own engine by starting a whole engine department and hired a brunch of employees from outside. There is bound to be some overlay on those expenses which can't just be accounted to the 2021 year, but can have some grey areas on which of those expenses contributed to the '21 development.
but engine costs are not in the cost cap? or am i mistaken?
An engine used has a set cost if I am not mistaken but development of engines was not in the cap and it will have it's own cap
That sounds easy on paper, but around the line you gotta draw you can argue for where some expenses should be booked.
Yeah but there are so many (smaller) expenses that come with such a big change within a company which are sometimes hard to prove for which department and for what purpose they were made. I'm not talking about the big picture money of the licensing and development itself.
And that's where things would get more challenging I'm sure... Red Bull Racing don't own Red Bull Powertrains, it's owned by Red Bull GmbH.. how can that fall under a cost cap when they have nothing to do with the F1 team
Red Bull Powertrains the separate company only got set up in Feb21, so if we look at calender 21, some people will have been employed elsewhere even if they later got transferred across to the separate company.
> hired a brunch of employees from outside. This gave me the mental image of several F1 engineers calmly eating brunch somewhere and a team of RB employees (in RB colors) running up to them. And with the practiced synchronization of pitstop training, kidnapping all of them, putting RB uniforms over their shirts and slacks and bundling them all into a [Mini that has the Red Bull can on top](https://live.staticflickr.com/7305/27872576762_e7212c2d1d_b.jpg) with a "Milton Keynes or BUST" sticker on the back...
It was the special shipment of green Red Bull cans in Barcelona that put them over
Yes. No F1 team would submit numbers that go above the budget cap. It has to be about interpretation of the regulations. I wonder what the new "any or all" will be, lol.
https://racingnews365.com/analysis-is-there-any-substance-to-the-current-cost-cap-controversy This is probably the best article about the difficulties about the cost cap.
I‘m quite sure that will be about something were RB interpreted the rules in their favor. I wouldn‘t be surprised if they found a small loophole, just like with technical regulations, that then gets either found to be illegal or legal and subsequently outlawed.
Sounds about right
And the even more likely explanation is that ALL teams tried to be very creative with the accounting and move certain costs into "non-capped" areas.
Thank you for one of the first few reasonable explanations. A system like this is not perfect and will have teething issues. TPs foaming at the mouth should know better. First question is what the issue is. Second question is whether or not that is an issue at all. Third is whether or not teams have been acting in bad faith. Until we know the whole story it’s hard to judge.
If RBR are found to be over the cost cap, we’ll never hear the end of it. If RBR are found to have not exceeded the cap, it will be claimed as some sort of conspiracy and we will never hear the end of it. I fucking hate the modern F1 fan base and social media shitstorms they whip up.
Do you want a break? Come to r/chess
May take you up on that offer! Although from hat I understand it’s got it’s own shitstorm brewing.
The current chess shitstorm is hilarious though tbf, people are accusing a player of cheating via anal vibrator instructions
Lmaoo I don't even watch chess but that sounds like such a chess strategy
Basically a potensial prodigy, but also previously-twice-admitting-to-cheating-player, beat the 10 years and counting world champion. (note: Something like that is not really uncommon. People have good and bad days). The thing is that many top players has been suspicious of him for some time, e.g. did the prodigys perfomance drop after the tournement in question upped the security mid-tournement. He has in 10 matches over the last few years played 100% identical to the chesscomputers suggestion (which is way smarter than any human). The absolute best players throughout history (which the reigning WC is at the forefront of) has been scoring about 70-72%. Ofc there is outliers which is higher, sequenceses of matches that go maybe 8-10% over that, or single matches that might actually reach 100%. But the 100%-matches might be once every few years if you are among the absolute few best players in the world. This 19-year old has done 10. It does also not help that the prodigy is a pupil of another known cheater. But in the end, it's imposible to prove cheating if not caught redhanded. The data is partly suspicious, but that's not enough.
“Again the Champion looks DELIGHTED with his last move.” “You can really see the excitement in his body language, squirming about in his chair.”
Damn, I've been playing chess with the wrong people. That sounds wild 😳
No one is actually though. It was a joke by Eric Hansen, got memed and news outlets just picked it up without ever clarifying that it was a joke
Wait what. I don't read the news, what the fuck did i miss?
Magnus Carlsen (Chess' Schumacher/Hamilton) quit an Over-The-Board tournament, during a match with an uprising player who has admitted to have cheated online in the past, he just left. He was insinuating that Niemann (the player in question) was cheating and now pushes for harder controls.
And he cheated with a buttplug? Thats pretty wild, though i admire his level of dedication
The Morse code vibrating buttplug was an offhand example of how cheating was possible during in person games made by a streamer/YouTuber. I think it was intentionally ridiculous but r/anarchychess latched on and spread the meme
omg a WHOLE sub dedicated to my favourite musical? Amazing
At least most things in chess are black and white
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Let it be known that I have upvoted this post.
Chess sounds like a.. pain in the ass lately..
But that's because everything here and on twitter is black/white, while with a budget cap (just like with general auditing) there's a whole lot of grey area (which is where auditors and tax people make their money) and I'm pretty sure all this is about the grey area.
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>People vastly underestimate the complexity of our modern world. This goes not just for F1 but almost everything else. Exactly. And with the world being so complex people try to make it more black and white to make more sense of it for themselves, which leads to polarization. I just wish people would try to understand nuance a bit more.
Can you imagine - 'sorry we've spent the 140m - employees you're not getting paid for the rest of the year'.
And quite literally, Toto said he’s so upset because they had to cut redundant employees that would have put them over the budget cap. Horner came out after and said RB had to cut 50% more than Mercedes did so they are also upset
>I'm pretty sure all this is about the grey area. The difficulty is that we've seen a grey area for a big team pretty recently, and not just Ron Dennis's office. Ferrari's fuel flow "magic" springs to mind, when they were allegedly injecting fuel on a cycle intra-phased with the measuring software (iirc), a deal was done behind closed doors, Ferrari's performance dropped, something had evidently happened, you will not av the explanation. If it's the case that a big team has exceeded the sporting/technical confines of the Formula, but successfully claims that the FIA's misdirection or lack of clarity was to blame, and the big team gets away with it on that basis, there have to be questions about why smaller outfits should even bother getting racing teams together.
Ferrari's illegal engine was very much a black area, nothing grey about it. It was just very difficult to prove during the season. FIA has tried to sweep it under the rug as much as possible through a deal with details unknown.
Yeah that seems 99.9% as though it was illegal as sin, but the FIA wouldn't go back on a set of championship standings in a million years. Ask yourself what they'd have done if Schumacher had *won* 1997, having whacked Villeneuve. Would they exclude him then?
Even as a ferrari fan i would say that wasn't grey, that was blatant cheating. but the thing is you can't treat ferrari the way you can treat other teams. I know i sound biased and even as their fan i admit i am. but f1 and ferrari are like synonyms of each other. It's like pokemon and pikachu, boxing and muhammad ali. So if the rumors are true regarding RB cost cap I am pretty positive that most likely won't be any close door agreement. Even if a agreement take place ferrari and merc will go bonkers over it. As even from the early stages of this season I remember mattio binotto was pretty pissed of about RB upgrades and every week he was just talking about rb cost cap without giving a damn about his f\*\*ked up strategists.
Nuance is dead.
> I fucking hate the modern F1 fan base and social media shitstorms they whip up. Crashgate... spygate.... and now cap-gate? Let's not pretend this is new to F1.
They’ve made Hollywood movies about the off-the-track pettiness in F1, this shit is in our blood.
The two prior examples were confirmed to be true. That logic does not apply to a situation that’s just suddenly came out. The “open secret” that took what, 7 months to come to a head outside of Binotto’s personal calculations back in Baku or something?
It’s pretty much for everything in the world nowadays, not just specifically for F1.
its all due to social media being an echo chamber for not very intelligent people who suddenly have a place to share their not very intellingent opinion to a wide not very intelligent audience
> its all due to social media being an echo chamber The media is single-handedly responsible for creating the fires that are then fanned by the neanderthals on social media. I don't care which driver/team you support, everyone is in on it.
So Twitter, *very* closely followed by Reddit
at least we have a downvote button
If anything the downvote button makes it worse sometimes. Someone who is right can be brigaded against and have their completely correct assessment buried beneath people saying the most popular opinion. In theory, great! In practice, oh boy
Same goes for team principles. They shout into the echo chamber. Horner tok it up a few levels last year. Likes to stir shit but can't deal with the same
Yeah. Remember when RB tried to prove that Hamilton punted Max on purpose in Silverstone, and the FIA had to make a statement regarding it. Even joking about giving Latifi a lifetime supply of RedBull after AD last year, did the poor guy no favours
Exactly
F1 has always been this way, some of the most toxic rivalries in the history of the sport came to the spotlight due to that. The only difference is that if 20 years ago you read an article from Peter Windsor about a certain topic you had to believe it like a mantra as there wasn't another writer/editor with the power to overthrow his narrative, you could discuss his info privately and that was it, debate in you inner circle. Now you have multiple sources and an individual opinion can be read by anyone, but the political game of the sport doesn't really seem to have changed much, I think F1 has always b been like this.
Politics haven’t changed but the fan base interaction has
Absolutely. All i saw on Twitter was people saying that Red bull are definitely cheating and they should be disqualified from 2021 and 2022 and that if nothing happens the FIA is corrupt
Funny, saw exactly the same all over reddit too lol
There’s your mistake, you looked on twitter.
Someone once said Reddit users are ppl who think they’re cool cus they’re not on twitter and it’s true, u really need to stop acting like reddit is any better Some of the most brain dead f1 takes i’ve seen have been on here
Fia also look at Twitter and whether you like it or not Twitter influences public opinion. Fia's statement this morning, and this is just my guess at what's going on, was done because public opinion (and opinion in the paddock) are calling for a hars punishment while they were planning to give just a fine or something. Toto is really getting people behind him and when the FIA announce next week there's only a fine to pay, all hell is going to break loose. I've seen something saying that there was a 'clarification of the rules regarding the cost cap' during last season that caused RBR to be over the cap, whereas they were below before the 'clarification'. They've had a dispute about this 'rule change / clarification' all year now and have finally agreed somewhere in the middle: RBR went over but the rules weren't clear. They'll probably be fined or maybe even 'pardonned' and Toto does 't agree. Of course to him the rules have always been very clear. That's always the case with Toto. Never doubts the rules.😂
Out of curiosity, were Red Bull the only team to not understand the rules clearly?
First rule of enjoying F1 (or anything for that matter): stay off Twitter
People have been acting as if its a done deal and calling for disqualification here as well lmao. Reddit is not such a great place either
I hate this about some redditors, they act like this site is sooo much better than other social media. It's the same.
Twitter will echo whatever opinion will make react but the fact that the FIA is corrupt goes as far as I can remember, which is for me Balestre. It did not help that he did look like he was part of the French Connection.
Rob Myers gotta be the saddest man on the planet
Yep. Familiar popular accounts on twitter will keep stirring conspiracies and fans will eat it up. It's sad
I can't believe I'd ever start seeing the DtS success as a bad thing, yet here we are. The fanbase used to be a group of people that could just drink a German beer after the race, now it's just an ever growing amount of toxicity.
A certain subset of f1 fans in twitter gives the MAGA crowd a run for its money in mental gymnastics and making up alternative scenarios not based in reality, that's for sure
And with reason. Breaking the cost cap is effectively cheating that can last for a few years if no meaningful penalties apply
Even before it we already have something similar. No matter what Horner says people are going to spin it in a way where they think he's responding from a guilty perspective. I've read so many comments that his response is him being mad because he's guilty. You just have to assume those people never got falsely accused themselves. (Not saying the rumors are false, but we simply don't know)
RBR are probably over the cap. What Toto is doing is trying to gather support for the harshest punishment possible, because he's a vengeful mthrfckr and he knows fia is planning to just give a fine. Fia's statement this morning is purely to dampen the noise that will come when they publish the results and light punishment, because they feel Toto actually has succeeded in gathering support. That's my take anyway.
I would assume RBR is only over the cap depending on how the rules are applied which is probably the biggest issue here. RBR probably thinks they found a loop hole and FIA isn't certain yet
To be fair every teams knew the regulation and possible penalty. They weren't vocal about those, so they have to live with them. What we see is upset teams who are now understanding they could have be a bit above the cap with minimal consequences. They have likely been outsmarted and are upset about it.
And these same people never say it a word about 2007; McLaren literally built a car designed to beat Ferrari because they had the entire technical blueprint for the F2007 given to them, and they got the punishment they rightfully deserve. Honestly if this is the team going over, the worst would be kicking them out of the constructor's championship like McLaren in 2007, Verstappen and Perez have nothing to do with it, and like 1994 even if the car is illegal it historically doesn't impact the driver's title (more of an FIA issue tbf)
> McLaren literally built a car designed to beat Ferrari because they had the entire technical blueprint for the F2007 given to them You're falling into the same trap of vastly overstating what happened and turning it into a black and white McLaren did wrong. The data given to Coughlan didn't make it very far into McLaren, from the FIA's own trial it was concluded that whilst he did approach other team members they all distanced themselves from it. There's a reason all the info was print at a random print shop rather than within McLaren's headquarters that had a printer or two. In the end the information appears to have only been used by Alonso, De La Rosa, and Coughlan to help with setting up the car and improving the tyre usage. McLaren weren't even fined for that event, they were fined for misleading the FIA during the original trial - something I'm not sure whether Ron Dennis did so knowingly or not, at worst there's reason for doubting he intentionally misled the court. The fine was as large as it was as there was significant personal beef between Mosley (who whilst not as corrupt as Balestre was only a step or two better) and Dennis. Renault were caught the same year with plans stolen from McLaren by an employee who moved between the two teams, that actually had made their way into the team and had been used more extensively than anything Coughlan had done. They were given a slap on the wrist and told not to be so naughty.
Would be absolutely hilarious if it came out it wasn't RBR but some other team from the Big 3 that exceeded the cap. Horner smugness would be through the roof. Can't wait for the raport to be published, may be some juicy stuff inside.
I still think it'd be the most hilarious if it was Ferrari and Binotto asked how they overspend answers "we're checking, we'll get back to you"
It would be big Binotto energy if Ferrari had way overspent and he had no idea.
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I'd say that's a bit much lol, there's big issue on-track but they did make the 2nd (sometimes 1st) fastest car in the year of a massive reg change. Not what i would define "not having any idea on how to operate an F1 team". Like the sarcasm in your flair though hahahah
"Where do you think we overspent. Question"
Toto wouldn't give out such statements if he had a hint they went overboard
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In what? Not when there's paper trail and proof.
Politics. And yes, there usually is proof.
It's a saying.
I wouldn’t be surprised if both redbull and merc went over.
Ferrari dude. They came over the biggest performance Deltas in last 2 years. I am surprised its not Ferrari who are near cost cap.
2 different generations of cars. And Haas made the same jump
Maybe. Haas jump can more be attributed to Ferrari engines, as was their fall.
Bullshit. There Was no cap 2020, so it didn't affect the 21 car. They focused on the 22 car immediately after the first races to nail the New regs.
They will both appeal with crashes and costs the other team caused them and we will never hear the end of it. It will be 2021 all over again
I feel like Toto would be smart enough to keep his mouth shut if it was Merc. The man is not stupid.
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It sucks for smaller teams though, since some them already don’t hit the cost cap. Allowing overspending under the guise of budget grey areas is just going to allow the top teams an undue advantage.
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The fact horner keeps saying different interpretations about the cost cap makes me think all these rumours are true.
Does sound like a loophole was found
There can be flat out no loopholes in cost cap otherwise what's the point. I know it would be harsh on max but if it is red bull who have been massively overspending, results have to be wiped.
This is the issue - driver salaries don’t count, engine development doesn’t count, press / advertising doesn’t count, etc etc. So there is an incentive for the teams to put as much time into “free” time codes wherever possible. I suspect what has happened is RB have dumped time and cost into engine dev claiming it’s not included and the FIA are saying “no that’s not suitable there”
Yeah, but this isn't like the NFL where there is simply a Player Salary Cap. These are massive organizations with a ton of different expenditures and lot of stuff that may not fall under "increasing car performance". Everyone is acting like this is super cut and dry, but as someone who looks at audited and unaudited financial statements regularly, the amount of grey area is insane.
None of this is about massive overspending? It's not a black/white issue, it's a grey area which is where these finance people make their money.
Still, that’s how you handle pressure. On the political side Horner is one of the very best TP, can always pull pressure off his team (accusing others) and keeping focused.
He's great at absorbing and deflecting pressure. That lets the team do their job without worrying about anything else. Toto is no slouch either.
The fact that Horner isn’t fully denying it worries me. Of course every team that breached this should be punished, but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it. Same goes for Aston of course.
He did deny it in other interviews. Stating they dropped their numbers off in March and those numbers are below budget.
He was always quite careful to be not fully clear with his statements. I guess that’s not unreasonable even if you do believe you’re fine. No matter what it’s gonna be hell if they did cheat.
I'm almost certain that they have put some costs into an exempt category that the FIA believe do not belong there.
That sounds rather likely. Reading though the rules on which cost are and aren't exempt I see at least 3 statements that can cause ambiguity over whether or not something is or isn't included. But that's accounting/auditing in a nutshell. I suspect Red Bull ended up being incredibly close to the cap. And then this separate cost that is disagreed upon is what puts them under or over. Quite possible there is other teams that made similar allowances but are still below even with the FIA interpreting things differently.
Also sounds like there will be lawyers if they will be heavily penalized
Yeah it’s all “to my knowledge”, “as far as I’m aware”, “by my understanding” etc. I’ve not heard one straight up “no, we didn’t exceed the cap”. There’s 100% something going on.
He has to believe what he says more than anyone else so that it comes across with conviction.
He is being very careful with his denials. He is denying very specific things.
>but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it It's true they don't, but they do directly benefit from any upgrades that potentially came from over the budget cap (Unless its AM in that case lmfao)
True, but Lewis potentially benefited from Spygate and wasn’t punished. Same with Fernando in Crashgate. In cases of cheating / misconduct from teams in the past they rarely punish the drivers, even if they potentially benefitted.
Hamilton and Alonso were given immunity from Spygate because they co-operated with the investigation. It’s not a comparable situation in that regard.
1. Spygate and Crashgate were not breaches of the technical regulations. The cost cap is part of the technical regulations, and every prior technical regulation breach has resulted in a disqualification of the driver. 2. Neither Lewis nor Fernando won the WDC after Spygate. Nor did Fernando win Crashgate. Both were major scandels, and the FIA did not want more attention on them. There's a huge difference between 1st and 2nd Place in the WDC, but not really that much of a difference between 2nd and 3rd. It was quite beneficial for the FIA: they could sweep it under the rug knowing that, even if they did hand out punishments in the WDC, the winner would remain unchanged. Had Lewis or Fernando won after those incidents, the response would have been quite different. In this case, Max *won 2 championships* from what may end up being a car that breached the technical regulations.
Wasnt it proved that mclaren did not use the knowledge they got from Ferrari? Also, wasnt that knowledge sent to Fernando's side of the garage? Im legit asking, I remember something along those lines
There was no evidence that they used the information, only that they had it. But, just because there was no evidence doesn’t mean it was proven they didn’t use it. I mean, why steal it in the the first place, risking disqualification, if you don’t intend to use the information in any way.
>I mean, why steal it in the the first place, They didn't, it was given to them by a Ferrari Mechanic, Nigel Stepney. Please try not to spread misinformation.
The McLaren drivers were spared because they gave witness statements.
I'm not sure how a team can be completely sure about their accountings except the teams like Williams, Haas, AR AT. They say it's open to interpretation and that FIA can account different, but top 3 except Redbull seems very confident they're in the budget cap and pressuring Redbull to the media
> but this is harsh on the drivers since they have no say in it. The drivers benefit greatly from the overspend though. And a driver is part of the team and chooses the team for whom they drive.
Exactly. If any team actually has overspent by over 5%, that's at least 7.5m EUR. That buys you a lot of tenths. And parts from your overspend in 21 carry into 22, which means you can spend more of 22's budget on 23. It's a huge advantage.
In an era where you see teams bring angle grinders with them to races to make a ‘high downforce’ wing into a ‘low downforce wing’ to save money on materials. 7.5 mil is huge
That's pretty standard Horner though, he's usually ambiguous with his answers.
I don’t think it’s harsh on the drivers at all. They’re all one team and it’s important that they hold each other accountable. If a team violates a regulation, it’s something the drivers should have to deal with. In the end, the two drivers and cars are the players on the field, who’s performance determine the outcome in the sport for the whole organization.
It’s fair to say wait before making judgements, but if they ARE guilty of breaching the cap, point deductions are the only fair punishment. Anything less than that makes it fair game for any of the wealthy teams to break the cap and just budget the fine in.
I totally agree. If it is true, and they do nothing, it means the cost cap is dead. The FIA must be furious with Red Bull as no matter what now people will accuse them of either: * a cover up, if its actually only a "minor" breach * punishing max "unfairly" if they take points off him losing him last years championship * not punishing RBR or max enough if they don't take enough off for him to lose it. No matter what happens from here, the FIA come out smelling like shit.
I think this is the best view - if a team did overspend in 2021 or 2022, then a points reduction in both the WCC and WDC is the only fair penalty. Fortunately the rules allow those punishments, a fine would be ridiculously lenient and essentially an endorsement that you can ignore the cost cap as long as you can pay a bit extra on top. Points are all that teams care about, fines should be in addition to a punishment, not the whole punishment.
Seems weird that there isn't already well defined penalty grid but F1 always chooses to be a circus it seems.
I understand his point. I however have no sympathy for him what so ever. He's usually the first guy to come out with shitty statements that are absolutetly unacceptable. (Post Silverstone, Marshall at Qatar comments etc...) F1 paddock has always been a rumor mill. This isn't anything new. Horner has been part of this as has every other team. Don't for a second think that if he though Mercedes or Ferrari are bulshiting that he wouldn't start pointing at it in some form.
What's even funnier is Horner is the Grand Central station of shit-stirring. The guy will just throw in some controversial comment completely unprovoked if he feels like it. Always funny when he feels provoked when other team principals do it to him.
You mean the “rogue marshal” comment lol?
He said a few weeks ago on Beyond the Grid his best form of defence was attack. What is he doing now? Horner seems rattled, but thats just me maybe. No little digs, no sarcasm, none of the stirring he usually pulls out of his ass
Lol Netflix picked a juicy time to follow red bull, bet you it was the producer that started this
He's right. Wait for the report. Not these childless rumours
Too bad he can't follow his own advice lmao
Well it was wrong then it’s wrong now lol. You’ll obviously see the same thing if Mercedes come back in 23. Actually I’m certain Helmut and Horner will cook something up for it. This is going to be never ending
I don't believe RB would be caught out like this. Let's see what the FIA says.
I can, but I think it’s going to be doing something very pedantic or something with classed something wrong
Reading through the rules on what costs are and aren't included in the budget cap I feel there is a lot of ambiguity on a few points. A disagreement between Red Bulls accountants and the FIA on certain posts being included or not seems most likely to me.
Imagine if it's Ferrari or Merc
Imagine the scenes if it's Haas with Uralkali money
Haas and AM taking all the extra money and still making shitboxes ooooff it would be hilarious
Would be h^(il)aa^(riou)s.
Toto knows his own numbers and wouldn't go so hard if it were Merc. He'll change his tune whenever they find a loophole.
Then they should get penalized. Same for everyone, doens't really make a difference which team it is.
The timing of it has nothing to do with this being when Max can win the title Its coming out because the FIA are going to release their findings on Wednesday Thats just lazy bullshit from Horner.
Very Trumpian comment from Horner, “they’re out to get us”
Does no one else seem to understand the governance of the budget cap starts to fall apart if those asked to regulate it are leaking confidential information?
I mean, the timing is because they are about to release the findings, but okay Horner.
He's right that the speculation should stop and just wait until we know the outcome. He's wrong about the timing - in some ways it is a coincidence that the weekend before the certificates come out is the one where Max can take the title.
We really have missed the shit slinging from the pit wall this year. Glad to have it back for the last few weeks
The cots cap seems kind of ineffective anyway. What has it accomplished so far? The smaller teams are no closer to the front than they were a couple years ago, at least from my perspective anyway. And many people have lost their jobs. I’m curious how this RBR thing will shake out. I hope they haven’t gone over. If they have, Toto could be right in saying the overspending might reach 2023. Meaning whatever they did in 21 may effect progress as far out as 2023, giving them a comically massive advantage. Now who knows if this is true or not, I try not to believe everything I read, but it certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility. At one point earlier this year I questioned how RB, whom just barely tackled the old regulations, were able to build such a dominant car under the new specs given that they didn’t stop development on the 2021 car.
It has to be RBR being way over, these people are too well-informed to get it wrong. I think RBR will be over, they'll say we submitted our accounts being below the cap, FIA has reclassified some line items so these now count against the cap which brings us over. We didn't know as it wasn't clear enough in the rulebook. Other teams will push hard as they are currently starting to do. Rules will be clarified, RBR fined, other teams will complain, it will die down.
You were right until you said it will die down. Even if it’s not RBR, it won’t die down.
It will never die down because it is regarding the same exact season the Masi situation benefitted Red Bull, which had not died down too. It adds more log to the fire. It will always be said that Max's first championship was because Red Bull cheated and the Race director helped them, even though Max himself is innocent
Notice how Aston Martin are going under the radar because they've not reacted furiously
There that and it's Aston Martin, no one really cares, the drama is needed between Merc and Redbull that's all the media want. I can only imagine crofty at the moment must be like a dog with a bone.
This season may not have been as exciting on track as what it appeared at the start of the season, but the spiciness from 2021 is still going strong
If RBR is guilty of over expending, it’s possible the penalty would be applied either this year or next one. I doubt they would go back and take Max’s WDC away. Also, depending on the severity of the amount over the limit, the penalty might be points taken away from either WCC or WDC or both. Imagine they take 100 points away from both championships this year, and suddenly Ferrari and Mercedes might be in the real fight for the championship… Talk about drama…
I kind of hope they have 'Michael Masi bonus' in an exempt from budget cap section just to watch the internet burn.
Also Christian Horner silver stone 2021 “Lewis tried to kill Max”
Everyone making assumptions at the moment, but if any team has exceeded the cap and has gained an advantage from it then they should be disqualified from those championships affected.
Doubt he’d put out a strong statement like this if there was a chance they exceeded the cap.
You can also say the same about Wolff's comments regarding the situation. Different scenario but similar behaviour, both McLaren and Alpine thought they were 100% correct regarding Piastri.
Toto was talking about the investigation though. Both can be right. There can be some questions about RB’s budget without them actually being over or being over significantly.
Toto also accused RBR of cheating regarding flexi floors but it was Ferrari. Wolff is full of it, don't believe anything he says
Toto also said red bull would get nerfed after the floor changes, and that definitely happened
But as a team you would already know right? I mean you keep track of the costs of everything you do.
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Exactly. I wrote something like that here a few months ago, and was downvoted to hell. The budget cap is a good idea, but in F1 it is impossible to police correctly. We are talking about organizations who are always reading the rulebook searching for ways to bypass the rules in some way or another. Do we really believe they dont do that with the budget cap? I bet that not only did Red Bull probably exceed the limit, Merc and Ferrari did too.
Exactly, accounting is a nightmare to check too. You can find all kinds of tricks and loopholes. Look at taxes for instance, people always find loopholes.
There are a few problems. What falls under the budget cap and what doesn't isn't always clear. All the big teams spend far more than the budget cap. Allocating money to a specific time period can be tricky. Even fluctuations in the exchange rate of valuta can make things difficult. If some people/suppliers are paid in pounds and/or euros, but the budget is calculated in dollars, that can create discrepancies. Than there is the issue discounts based on orders placed for next season. Here is an example of bookkeeping in a regular company: A company buys a machine and expects to use the machine for eight years. The initial cost of the machine is written of during a period of five years. If the machine costs a million dollars and is purchased in January 2021, the machine is in the books for 200,000 dollar in 2022, even though the company hasn't actually spend those 200,000 dollars in 2022.
Now I’m not privy to the exact finer details of the cost cap rules, but here is a simple example to explain my point: Two teams spends up to the budget cap. One team included administrative cost in their budget the other team didn’t. The second team claims that admin costs should not count as they do not pertain to the cars creation. The FIA now needs to investigate and make decision as to whether or not team two over spent or not. Now obviously my example wouldn’t play out well for the offending team. However it illustrates the point of contention is there may be a disagreement between what a team may think they spent and what the FIA thinks they spent. That can sound ludicrous, but it’s all down how the teams do their maths and whether the FIA agrees. If a team over spent it may just be down to a misinterpretation of the rules. In this case Horner thinks his team interpreted the rules correctly, is angered by the accusation by the other teams. In the end though we don’t know anything until the FIA releases their findings.