According to Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur, Red Bull’s punishment for exceeding the budget cap in 2021 was ridiculously light.
October will mark a year since it was revealed that Red Bull exceeded the budget cap for the 2021 season by around two million dollars.
The Austrian team was subsequently punished for this with a fine of seven million dollars and, above all, a reduction of the time allocation for development in the wind tunnel and using computer simulations by 10 percent.
Although this is not a new case, the case still raises passions. Apparently also for the reason that, despite the penalty, Red Bull is completely dominating this season, having won all 12 races so far.
Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur has now commented on the case of exceeding the budget ceiling by Red Bull in an interview with Gazzetta Dello Sport.
“The punishment, like the one given last year, was really not severe. If the case were to be repeated, such a punishment should be much stricter,” the Frenchman is convinced.
“You have to keep in mind that a technical advantage translates into a sporting advantage. It should therefore be a sports penalty, not a fine. When you play with your hand in football, they don’t give you an unsportsmanlike penalty either,” Vasseur explained.
“Reducing wind tunnel work time by 10% is a big joke. They had most of the work done before running out of time,” the Ferrari boss continued.
The FIA, while justifying the penalty for Red Bull, nevertheless stated that it was a minor offense on the part of the Austrian team. This is precisely defined by the rules – if the budget limit is exceeded by a maximum of five percent, then it is a small overrun.
Vasseur disagrees with this.
“A five percent violation is not small, but large. If you have a budget of 135 million dollars, 80 million of that goes to personnel, another 20 million goes to costs related to plants, material, brakes and so on. It also costs approximately $20 million to produce four chassis at the start of the season. Then you get to around $120-125 million, which is about the same for everyone,” Vasseur calculated, adding:
“So that leaves about $10 million to develop. If you go over budget by a few million, then you shouldn’t be looking at a total of $135 million as stated. We shouldn’t sweep it under the rug. There is a big difference between an innocent mistake and an intention. We have to be tough because this is the future of the budget cap. Otherwise, everyone will be doing the same thing.”
2023-08-17 11:02:24
#Vasseur #called #penalty #exceeding #budget #ceiling #Red #Bull #joke #F1sport.cz
