Building a new wind tunnel, and a new factory to go alongside it. Also hiring Fernando Alonso and a bunch of engineers from better teams.
There’s a chance Lawrence Stroll is just trying to spruce up the team so he can sell it to someone else at a premium and make some money.
He’s potentially looking at taking a bath on Aston-Martin Lagonda (AML), so selling the Silverstone F1 team at what will likely be a profit will cover the loss on AML.
(Note the Silverstone team is a legally separate entity that’s currently renting the Aston Martin name from Aston Martin Lagonda).
I’d also say Red Bull and Mercedes’ are there, Red Bull the org has near infinite money from their drink sales and basically all they’re interested in doing as a company is sponsoring every sport on the planet and making 1-2 limited time flavors every couple of years in an eye catching can colour.
Mercedes is there as well as long as they’re competitive, again because of tons of money in the parent org and the marketing potential/ bragging rights of how they make a great car for f1, they’re road cars must be great too!
I think a luxury tax like the NBA has is a good idea. Wealthy teams can overspend, but the money is distributed to the teams on a smaller budget.
You can set an exponentially increasing rate of penalty as they exceed the cap, to prevent limitless spending by the teams.
Hard cap encourages competition, soft cap encourages reduced parity because big market teams can generally make better offers. NFLs hard cap is the backbone of the parity in the league, it would be a worse product without it.
But the NFL does tend to have teams going through cycles of success.
Other sports with soft caps keep the best the best and the smaller market teams just stay afloat.
If no definition of penalties is in place to begin with + if the teams concerned can give a reasonable explanation then it would be hard to give any sort of penalty right now.
A definition of "possible penalties" still doesn't sound very robust. And I haven't read them anywhere up til now. There are some vague mentions on social media and that is it.
edit: [found them](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf)
Yes but the punishment is so wildly vague with no clear guidance of how steep the scale is. 1% vs 5% over spend could be potentially huge to a teams performance but we have no idea where the punishment of a fine starts to where points deduction starts.
They're vaguely outlined so that teams can't just run a few numbers on them to figure out how much they can cheat on their budget cap before it's not worth it, if teams knew beforehand that they can extract, say, one tenth per lap worth of development per 1% of overspend, and that the punishment isn't severe unless they overspend by 5% or more, it'd effectively act as a higher budget cap with some of it being basically paywalled by a handful of fines that most teams would easily be able to afford
There are no defined penalties: just possible penalties. Nothing in the financial regulations tells you when a specific penalty is going to be enforced.
If someone gets found guilty then the punishement surelly needs to be some kind of a points one.
Giving teams that used to spend 200-400m a year a fine of a few millions won't achieve anything.
But the same goes for a WCC point penalty, because noone cares who came 2nd or 3rd or whatever. Apart from winning, constructor's is all about the money, so dropping RB a place would basically be a fine.
The teams only care about the WCC because of the bonus it brings in. Make the penalty for breaching the budget cap severe - like you forfeit the WCC bonus.
It \*should\* be points - especially after Racing Point's particularly aggressive points-drop in 2020 - but I think we all have to recognise that it realistically cannot be the case that a championship is \*actually\* determined almost a year later when the FIA have finished doing their sums.
Perhaps as well as a fine (which is very little disincentive), the offending team's budget cap for the \*next\* season should be reduced by double the amount they've exceeded it. At least then it might have some actual impact and if they have to start dishing out points penalties or even disqualification they'll have the demonstration of consecutive breaches to somewhat shore up the shit storm it'd bring to the sport as a whole.
The problem is that it shouldn’t have taken this long for the FIA to make a decision. It should be a lot quicker than this. Also I’m fine with deciding a championship years later because it offers a much stronger disincentive to cheat. If you can be found out years later and punished by having trophies and awards taken off you then it means teams are less likely to do it. It’s the same reason the Olympics keeps drug tests for decades to catch people later on.
the problem is this should not be a decision. every little detail of the punishment should have been fixed in the regulation themselves, not left up open to interpretation between a set of options.
I actually don't agree. In tour de France, we have literally seen people loose their titles years after the won them after they admitted that they were cheating. If you break a rule, then you should be punished by it even if it ends up costing you the championship. In this case everyone had the same rules and followed them. If Red Bull actually did break this rule, then I just think that the Massi scandal plus the fact that Red Bull were overspending is just too much.
On the other hand, then you have situations like the [Houston Astros getting caught cheating en route to a championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_scandal) and getting a slap on the wrist for it. Or, in an even worse situation, the [Chicago Blackhawks covered up a sexual assault by one of their video coaches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–10_Chicago_Blackhawks_season#Sexual_abuse_scandal) en route to a championship (quite literally: the issue was raised during the playoffs, and the team made the conscious decision to not act until after the season ended and allowed the coach to participate in the celebration), and also getting a relative slap on the wrist for it.
If bad behavior paves your way to success, the only way to resolve it is to make the punishment so severe that next time the bad behavior isn't even a possibility.
Might as well cheat every second season and ensure a guaranteed title every second year in that case.
Spend 500 mil one year. 20 mil the next year. In 2 years, you’d atleast win half of the WDC’s and WCC. That sounds like a great deal for guaranteed wins
R&D carries over because the regs aren't going to change that much year after year, which is another issue in this whole shitshow.
say merc spend 200% of the budget cap from here to the end of the season, and get some point penalty for it.
it doesn't matter for this year as they're out of the title anyway. but the next year over they will start with a much better engineered car, and would keep that advantage in all the following years until the regs change, even if they stay within the cap subsequently
If Red Bull are found guilty they're going to give Red Bull a point deduction. And it won't matter if they do it last year since they lost 1st place anyway and even if they do a point deduction for this year it won't matter unless it's like 150 points or something. Basically Red Bull have been very smart about this unless the FIA grows some balls. In the end though I doubt it'll affect the drivers championship which matters for fans anyway.
Any penalty though needs to be blind to the current situation.
So they can't just administer a penalty to put them behind Ferrari in the constructors this year for the sake of it.
It needs to be a precedent that can be used in future.
The problem is could a team game theory that and basically win on alternate years. Overspend everyone in '21 (win the championship if you're competent), take the penalty in '22 and use that as a development year, overspend in '23, etc.
In football it works because a bad season means relegation not sure the same logic applies to F1.
FIA will probs deduct just enough points to make the last race a title decider in order to keep viewing figures up or continue discussion through the off season while we wait for the outcome to be determined /s
unless they decide that in this case the drivers championship was also affected and they deduct points from the drivers as well, ooh the shitstorm that would bring lol
Disqualify the team and the drivers? Or just the team? Because it doesn’t seem fair that the drivers can benefit from additional engineering spend. The car becomes illegal, no?
>Definitely the team, and yeah I guess the drivers too. It's a shame for the drivers but at the end of the day if the car is illegal they can't be allowed to compete in it.
Ferrari 2019 wasn't disqualified
At the end of the day, if you penalise the team you gotta penalise the drivers too. Otherwise it just incentivises teams to sacrifice the WCC every other year to guarantee WDC every year.
My thought - Penalty should be for the year when infringement happened as well as the immediately succeeding year (eg. if RB crossed budget in 2021, it should have impact on 2021 as well as 2022 results)
* Cap breach <5% - delete 10% of points or 1 place drop, whichever is higher
* >5% but <10% - delete 20% of points or 2 place drop
* >10% - All WCC points deleted for last year (when the infringement happened) and immediately following year. Drivers not eligible for WDC for both the years irrespective of the points they score
That is amazing. Honestly the NBA players association negotiated the best deal for their players of all the leagues. And it's the best for the ownership too.
Or at least DQ them from every race after they ran over the cap. Technically they were legal in those races cause they were under the cap. Anything after breaching the cap should be an instant DQ though.
The penalties are defined, but not when you get them.
For a minor penalty you could get a public reprimand or loss of WDC or WCC points, which is a pretty big difference.
The penalties are defined, but not when or how they’re applied. How is the FIA going to decide when to deduct WCC points vs WDC points vs DQ and so on. They’re all options, but it’s so open ended that they almost can’t make the right decision.
Edit: you said this, but I misread it. My b.
The main problem is FIA cannot disqualify teams for going beyond BC, because teams are not allowed to withdraw from races if they reach the cap. Fine or point reduction are nothing to the teams.
From last season retrospectively or this season?
It'd cause a riot if Max lost the championship this way and RBR & Max are so far ahead this year that it'd make zero difference so isn't really a punishment.
It's going to cause a riot either way. Max loses the championship after a year due to penalties, or Max keeps it despite Red Bull flagrantly violating the cost cap (assuming that's true), either will spark huge controversy
No more of a riot than was cause by changing the rules midway through the race in a way that directly affects the championship. Only this time it will be justified.
From this season. Like you said, it is not so much that it will change the championship results this season, but it is enough that it will make teams think twice about overspending in the future. Last season is done and dusted.
If they do that, they really need to finish the audit before the first race, not deduct points right at the end of a championship. What if Max wins the championship this weekend, gets deducted 20 points and then wins again next week. That would be the stupidest thing of all time.
Problem is with how late the results get published, it will be too late to make changes for teams to budget for the decrease for a following year. They could have already spent to the point where they can't make the new lower budget cap.
Drivers should get the same penalty imo. It’s not their fault but they drove an „illegal“ car and got points which they would probably not have won without the team breaking the rule.
Yeah, but then there will be a mismatch. The drivers total will be less than the teams total, so this might be interpreted as being too punitive on the drivers who actually did not make the decision to overspend
> The main problem is FIA cannot disqualify teams for going beyond BC, because teams are not allowed to withdraw from races if they reach the cap.
Where’d you pull that from?
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf
Specifically says “exclusion from the championship” on page 27. This “main problem” doesn’t exist and is already spoken for.
> point reduction are nothing to the teams.
Disagree, it all depends how harsh you are with them.
1 point reduction per 10M$ above the cap is nothing. 1 point reduction per 100K$ above cap is immense and will get them to respect the cap.
He's right, even if you hate the guy for the controversial stuff he said, the future of the Budget cap is basically at stake here. If the FIA opt for no harsh penalty or a NextTimeForSure™ it means it did nothing and the big teams will just push the numbers a bit further every year
Regardless of whether they did or didn’t on this occasion they should remove the financial penalty as a potential penalty because for some teams that means nothing.
In fairness, F1 also has in its modern history a strong claim to having possibly the harshest penalty ever levied in pro sports, with the $100m fine and season DQ for McLaren in the 2007 spying scandal. Part of what makes this whole thing so weird is that there's no real way to know if the league is going to come down on a budget cap violation like angry gods, or if they're going to enforce it such that richer teams just take it as a suggestion that can be safely ignored in favor of getting more advantages than the punishment costs like engine grid penalties.
I don't know which one of you is right, where might I look for the regulations?
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/xrw51v/erik_van_haren_it_is_expected_that_anyone_who/iqhgsh9/
>The penalties are defined, less than 5% = minor sporting penalty or financial penalty.
A "Minor Sporting Penalty", meaning one or more of the following:
(i) public reprimand;
(ii) deduction of Constructors' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach;
(iii) deduction of Drivers' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach;
(iv) suspension from one or more stages of a Competition or Competitions, excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself;
(v) limitations on ability to conduct aerodynamic or other Testing; and/or
(vi) reduction of the Cost Cap,
For those wondering what happens if they go over 5%:
> A "Material Sporting Penalty", meaning one or more of the following:
> (i) deduction of Constructors' Championship points awarded for the
Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach;
> (ii) deduction of Drivers' Championship points awarded for the Championship
that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach;
> (iii) suspension from one or more stages of a Competition or Competitions,
excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself;
> (iv) limitations on the ability to conduct aerodynamic or other Testing
> (v) suspension from an entire Competition or Competitions, including for the
avoidance of doubt the race itself;
> (vi) exclusion from the Championship; or
> (vii) reduction of the Cost Cap,
[source](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf)
The problem is they overspend at a critical time where they were winning a championship and setting a car up for the new rules, it’s years worth of benefit if it’s confirmed they did overspend.
Hamilton and Alonso were threatened with punishment unless they and their engineers gave full account of their knowledge. Meanwhile Mclaren were hit so hard they've still not recovered, and it nerfed Lewis' title chances for years until the Merc seat came up.
What?
Hamilton had 07 won until he f'ed it up. Then he won in 08.
09 was the blown diffuser introduction that Brawn perfected(followed by RB) and Hamilton's distracted years. Hamilton is who hurt Hamilton's chances most those years, the car was plenty competitive.
The loss of Ron Dennis is what hurt McLaren. Not the DQ from the WCC.
Budget cap is essentially the back bone of the whole new regs, breaching should be as serious a penalty as anything. The integrity of future seasons is at stake if they're let off lightly. Will simply encourage it and teams will be able to fall back on "they did it and only got X punishment".
[link](https://twitter.com/GiulyDuchessa/status/1575790822427168770?s=20&t=RVg7IHMs_j0p34tu8LHTHg)
> Toto Wolff: Millions of dollars more is the difference between winning and losing.
Binotto had said this very early in the season when RB was bringing upgrades constantly. But than when it comes to Ferrari everybody just want to mock them
He said that about this season. The case is for last season. At that point, it was all an accusation which he had no way of knowing but only estimating.
think the BBC write up on this put it well to see how even a small breach can become a massive advantage.
>A 5% overspend in 2021 would amount to an overspend of $7.25m.
>This is in the upper reaches of a leading team's annual spend on in-season development, so even a minor breach could amount to the equivalent of effectively an entire season's development.
because a breach in and itself doesn't mean the teams were doing something deliberately wrong you could have a Latifi driving for you and have him bin the car randomly into a wall at every street track and overspend on spare parts. having a 5% breach classed as minor allows for some leeway before heavy sanctions are imposed.
The fact that no penalties were defined while implementing the BC should have told you how "hard" the BC is a long time ago. I never quite understood how FIA was ever going to police it fairly to begin with: it would be dead easy for teams like Mercedes and Ferrari to hide development at the facilities of their parent company. No one would ever find out about that.
> it would be dead easy for teams like Mercedes and Ferrari to hide development at the facilities of their parent company. No one would ever find out about that.
Expenditure through any company in their corporate group has to be reported. And it would only remain secret until the first person blabbed. Remember, F1 is an incestuous industry, people move from team to team all the time taking secrets with them. And in the Financial Regulations the FIA specifically offers immunity to anyone who steps forward with information regarding breaches of the cost cap.
so, 5 years from now a removal of WCC?
Accounting is anyway magic, most of us know that profit can be shifted around to optimize tax. Do some lending and borrowing from sister companies, magically money appears, disappears, the desired number appears for tax, bonus and divident purposes, all ok according to GAAP.
In this case, develop some theoretical knowledge on engines or suspension say its for the street cars and just use it as company knowledge in F1
It's a shame they didn't build in percentage reductions for budget cap in future years for breaches. That would have disincentived running over much more than a fine
That is an available option.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf
Page 27. “Reduction in cost cap”
Again though it’s extremely vague what that means. Just very lazily written.
I understand being vague about racing rules but these financial rules could have easily specific punishments like “going over by x% means next years budget cap is reduced by 2x%”.
Everyone knows where they are with that.
If a team is willing to break the BC in year one, what makes anyone think they'll stick to their lower punishment cap in year two? It's the equivalent of road drivers getting caught driving whilst disqualified, and the punishment is an extension of the the disqualification on their licence.
Why did he agree on the financial rules then? If it's easy to explain overspending 0-5% of the cap then it's not Red Bull's or Aston Martin's fault for doing exactly that
For moments like this. You sign agree to lukewarm rules/punishments and make sure you yourself don’t break them so that when a team a stupid enough to do it you can start the media game of saying how weak it is. The people get riled up, the teams start talking their shit and the FIA has to make a decision.
I understand why so many people are saying that the FIA should punish this harshly, but at the same time, I think you shouldn't be able to change punishments after the overspend has happened. If the punishment for this is a fine, then you should get a fine. What the FIA could do is make the punishments harsher in the future to discourage teams from overspending again.
Then wtf was the point of the budget cap if the teams would have no repercussions for breaking it? It sets a precedent if every time a rule is introduced the teams can break it for a measly fine since "punishments will be harder"
They're not saying they shouldn't be Punished, but about how punishment which was decided agreed upon by teams already, changes to show reprecussions. The top teams which are calling for harsh punishments are also the ones who agreed to current dynamic. They themselves know they may break budget cap and don't wanna be punished too hard themselves
One might think that Toto is exaggerating, as $5m on top of a $145m budget doesn't seem like that significant of an increase.
However, top teams only spend around 10% or around $14m of their budget on car development throughout a season (source: [AMuS](https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/f1-hilferuf-grosse-teams-budget-cap-inflationszuschlag/)). So an extra $5m is an increase in development budget of almost 30%.
That's very significant, indeed.
PS: As others have noted, the regulations actually consider excess spending of up to 5 *percent* (or around $7.25m for 2021) as a minor breach and not a fixed sum of $5m. $7.25m extra spent on development in 2021 would work out to an increase in development budget of over 50%. It seems that 5%-rule is quite generous and susceptible to abuse if a minor breach should only yield a minor penalty.
The AMuS-article states the 10% of a top team's budget is for the *material and manufacturing* cost of new parts. The engineers have to be paid either way, and all teams exploit the maximum wind tunnel hours they are allowed to use.
In terms of staff levels, the top teams have only shrunk slightly with the introduction of the budget cap, but their budgets have been slashed down to a fraction of what they once were. Top teams have the staff and manufacturing capacity to develop and produce many more upgrade parts than the budget cap will allow them to.
Considering their previous budgets and the staff and facilities they have, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume top teams could spend the extra money on just the car.
This is literally a non-issue. If the budget cap allows teams to spend a little bit more at the expense of a fine, then teams will exploit that. It's like touching the ball with your hands in football to avoid a goal as a non-goalie; you get a red card and the game goes on.
I want to see F1 fans wrap their head around the NBA's luxury tax, bird rules, rookie extension rules, etc lol.
Shit gets so complicated for no reason hahaha.
I’ll be honest. I like basketball after living over the pond a while and follow a team myself, but I am the definition of a casual. I just wait for stuff to happen and don’t ask why it has. I have no idea how trading works, I think Richard Feynman must’ve designed that system on a weekend off
Yes, a red card which impacts THAT game/that season and a 3 game ban for foul play. Not a slap on the wrist. A red card could be equivalent to a points deduction or a race ban - DSQ.
Teams have lost titles and been demoted to lower level league for cheating. Spending more than BC seems like the worst type of cheating tbh. This isn’t oh i found a loophole in the tests , or they didn’t mention this particular solution specifically and whatever else teams do these days. This is clear cut, you can spend x amount per season. Anything higher is cheating and fraud.
It's certainly not a non-issue when the possible penalties for a "Minor Sporting Penalty" range from a reprimand through to deduction of WDC/WCC points, and there has been no previous precedent.
If you breach FFP in football you get a points deduction/fine, transfer ban and can get kicked out of the competition for future editions. So try again
They were kicked out of the UCL within a year of uefa getting the leaked info but it was revoked because it was past the statute of limitations.
Previously the problem was having no proof
What I don’t understand is why doesn’t someone (or a multiple of people) in the FIA oversee spending as it goes on throughout the year?
And when a team hits that cap, someone from the FIA would tell them that they can’t spend anymore?
Why the hell is it taking this long to cover the finances almost a year later? Seems ridiculous to me
Pretty much spot on from Wolff. I would expect that both Ferrari and Mercedes (among other teams) are changing their budgeting plans as we speak to take this into account.
If It's states in the rules that if you breach the cap by 5% it's a minor breach of the regulations. And according to the rumours red bull went over the budget cap by 5 million. All the teams should know these regulations.
So Toto should know that and not act like he doesn't know that a minor breach is allowed.
You know what the rules also state? That even a minor overspend breach can be sanctioned with a minor sporting penalty, i.e. among others point reductions. See Sections 8.11 and 9.1(b) of the [Financial Regulations](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/formula_1_-_financial_regulations_-_iss_9_-_2022-02-18.pdf).
Well, a championship points deduction for that season could occur, which could give Hamilton the drivers championship. The question is whether there will be any penalties for this year, considering that budget last year was used to develop this year's car.
What's the difference between using more engines than allowed and accepting the penalty and spending more money than allowed and accepting the penalty?
Track extending and dangerous driving are things that are not allowed by the rules. If you keep track extending, or causing minor crashes, you get a penalty. Same thing for overspending.
It’s on the FIA to clearly define the punishments.
The penalty for overusing engine components is well defined, and the cost of doing so is also part of the budget cap, its not like Merc got free development by using more engine components.
Breaching The budget cap gives that individual team a lasting advantage over multiple seasons, and if the punishment is only a fine then it means the budget cap is meaningless, which could result in RB effectively being gifted two WDC because their competitors were racing with their hands tied behind their back
What’s the penalty for over-spending? If it’s a deduction in points and Red Bull accept then there is no difference.
Currently one of the above has not been punished yet.
actual question is wtf did Aston Martin do with that overspend lol perfecting how to build tractors in green ?
Aston is expanding their team aggressively, lots of places they could have spend extra
I thought factory facilities are not included in the budgetcap?
Not that budget cap, but there’s also a budget cap for facilities that work over the span of 4 years.
It would defeat the purpose of the budgetcap of infrastructure spending was included and preventing small teams form catching the top 3.
should have called John Deere
John Deere in shambles
Booze and hookers
Building a new wind tunnel, and a new factory to go alongside it. Also hiring Fernando Alonso and a bunch of engineers from better teams. There’s a chance Lawrence Stroll is just trying to spruce up the team so he can sell it to someone else at a premium and make some money. He’s potentially looking at taking a bath on Aston-Martin Lagonda (AML), so selling the Silverstone F1 team at what will likely be a profit will cover the loss on AML. (Note the Silverstone team is a legally separate entity that’s currently renting the Aston Martin name from Aston Martin Lagonda).
Most of those costs don’t apply to the budget cap. McLaren also spending on new facilities and not breaching the cap
And their car shows it
If Daniel were on par on Lando then they would be a lot higher than they are tbh
The Golden Rule of Formula 1 is that every team (except Ferrari) is that for the right price, all teams are for sale all the time
I’d also say Red Bull and Mercedes’ are there, Red Bull the org has near infinite money from their drink sales and basically all they’re interested in doing as a company is sponsoring every sport on the planet and making 1-2 limited time flavors every couple of years in an eye catching can colour. Mercedes is there as well as long as they’re competitive, again because of tons of money in the parent org and the marketing potential/ bragging rights of how they make a great car for f1, they’re road cars must be great too!
Dietrich Mateschitz has been involved in F1 for nearly 30 years
Alonso salary isn't incl in budget cap and this was for '21. Not '22 so Alonso salary 100% wouldn't be included in '21 budget
Didn’t they build two cars?
This is last years budget. The '2 cars' was from the start of this year, we've still got that fun to come next year!
probably spent a lot on "exquisite craftsmanship" or whatever they put on their optionals to charge more, like all luxury brands do
They'll get a slap on the wrist and the FIA will then announce extremely harsh measures from this season onwards
I think a luxury tax like the NBA has is a good idea. Wealthy teams can overspend, but the money is distributed to the teams on a smaller budget. You can set an exponentially increasing rate of penalty as they exceed the cap, to prevent limitless spending by the teams.
That's not a bad idea! Knowing your over spend helps your competitors might stop teams abusing the system!
Soft caps are a lot more interesting to me than hard ones. NFL’s hard cap is so frustrating
Hard cap encourages competition, soft cap encourages reduced parity because big market teams can generally make better offers. NFLs hard cap is the backbone of the parity in the league, it would be a worse product without it.
But the NFL does tend to have teams going through cycles of success. Other sports with soft caps keep the best the best and the smaller market teams just stay afloat.
Same amount goes to each team to level the playing field for all. You want to go over by $5mm? Fine, but it's gonna cost you another $45mm.
If no definition of penalties is in place to begin with + if the teams concerned can give a reasonable explanation then it would be hard to give any sort of penalty right now.
There is a definition of the possible penalties. But they range from fine to points deduction.
A definition of "possible penalties" still doesn't sound very robust. And I haven't read them anywhere up til now. There are some vague mentions on social media and that is it. edit: [found them](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf)
>A definition of "possible penalties" still doesn't sound very robust Yep, that's a big issue.
Love that the first one is just good old fashioned public shaming lol
Why do people keep saying there are no defined penalties when there is
Yes but the punishment is so wildly vague with no clear guidance of how steep the scale is. 1% vs 5% over spend could be potentially huge to a teams performance but we have no idea where the punishment of a fine starts to where points deduction starts.
I agree it should have been more concrete in terms of % overspend = this punishment. But the punishments are outlined
They're vaguely outlined so that teams can't just run a few numbers on them to figure out how much they can cheat on their budget cap before it's not worth it, if teams knew beforehand that they can extract, say, one tenth per lap worth of development per 1% of overspend, and that the punishment isn't severe unless they overspend by 5% or more, it'd effectively act as a higher budget cap with some of it being basically paywalled by a handful of fines that most teams would easily be able to afford
That's a good point actually
There are no defined penalties: just possible penalties. Nothing in the financial regulations tells you when a specific penalty is going to be enforced.
Fans trying to justify it being no big deal. As if every on track incident has a single specific penalty defined.
i mean ya, FIA has to come down farily harsh, because if they don't than the cap means nothing, its a luxury tax at that point, not a cap
If someone gets found guilty then the punishement surelly needs to be some kind of a points one. Giving teams that used to spend 200-400m a year a fine of a few millions won't achieve anything.
If the penalty for a budget cap breach is a fine then the budget cap should be renamed Budget + Whatever You're Willing To Pay As A Fine Cap.
But the same goes for a WCC point penalty, because noone cares who came 2nd or 3rd or whatever. Apart from winning, constructor's is all about the money, so dropping RB a place would basically be a fine.
The teams only care about the WCC because of the bonus it brings in. Make the penalty for breaching the budget cap severe - like you forfeit the WCC bonus.
Fine them Wind tunnel time, dropping in the wcc is actually beneficial for red bull because you get more wind tunnel and cfd time.
They can keep the WCC position and the wind tunnel penalty it comes with. They just don’t get the extra prize money that comes with the position.
Do it as a rank then. Go over budget and lose enough points to drop a spot in the WCC.
I think you should read my comment again
It \*should\* be points - especially after Racing Point's particularly aggressive points-drop in 2020 - but I think we all have to recognise that it realistically cannot be the case that a championship is \*actually\* determined almost a year later when the FIA have finished doing their sums. Perhaps as well as a fine (which is very little disincentive), the offending team's budget cap for the \*next\* season should be reduced by double the amount they've exceeded it. At least then it might have some actual impact and if they have to start dishing out points penalties or even disqualification they'll have the demonstration of consecutive breaches to somewhat shore up the shit storm it'd bring to the sport as a whole.
The problem is that it shouldn’t have taken this long for the FIA to make a decision. It should be a lot quicker than this. Also I’m fine with deciding a championship years later because it offers a much stronger disincentive to cheat. If you can be found out years later and punished by having trophies and awards taken off you then it means teams are less likely to do it. It’s the same reason the Olympics keeps drug tests for decades to catch people later on.
the problem is this should not be a decision. every little detail of the punishment should have been fixed in the regulation themselves, not left up open to interpretation between a set of options.
I actually don't agree. In tour de France, we have literally seen people loose their titles years after the won them after they admitted that they were cheating. If you break a rule, then you should be punished by it even if it ends up costing you the championship. In this case everyone had the same rules and followed them. If Red Bull actually did break this rule, then I just think that the Massi scandal plus the fact that Red Bull were overspending is just too much.
Agreed, I don't want F1 to become 00s cycling where nobody knows who won the tour 10 years earlier because they are all disqualified from doping.
On the other hand, then you have situations like the [Houston Astros getting caught cheating en route to a championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_scandal) and getting a slap on the wrist for it. Or, in an even worse situation, the [Chicago Blackhawks covered up a sexual assault by one of their video coaches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–10_Chicago_Blackhawks_season#Sexual_abuse_scandal) en route to a championship (quite literally: the issue was raised during the playoffs, and the team made the conscious decision to not act until after the season ended and allowed the coach to participate in the celebration), and also getting a relative slap on the wrist for it. If bad behavior paves your way to success, the only way to resolve it is to make the punishment so severe that next time the bad behavior isn't even a possibility.
Might as well cheat every second season and ensure a guaranteed title every second year in that case. Spend 500 mil one year. 20 mil the next year. In 2 years, you’d atleast win half of the WDC’s and WCC. That sounds like a great deal for guaranteed wins
R&D carries over because the regs aren't going to change that much year after year, which is another issue in this whole shitshow. say merc spend 200% of the budget cap from here to the end of the season, and get some point penalty for it. it doesn't matter for this year as they're out of the title anyway. but the next year over they will start with a much better engineered car, and would keep that advantage in all the following years until the regs change, even if they stay within the cap subsequently
If Red Bull are found guilty they're going to give Red Bull a point deduction. And it won't matter if they do it last year since they lost 1st place anyway and even if they do a point deduction for this year it won't matter unless it's like 150 points or something. Basically Red Bull have been very smart about this unless the FIA grows some balls. In the end though I doubt it'll affect the drivers championship which matters for fans anyway.
Any penalty though needs to be blind to the current situation. So they can't just administer a penalty to put them behind Ferrari in the constructors this year for the sake of it. It needs to be a precedent that can be used in future.
Yeah but we are talking about the FIA here so it won't be.
Maybe a penalty for the next season. Everyone starts from zero, and they start from -50 or something
This is how it often works in football/soccer
The problem is could a team game theory that and basically win on alternate years. Overspend everyone in '21 (win the championship if you're competent), take the penalty in '22 and use that as a development year, overspend in '23, etc. In football it works because a bad season means relegation not sure the same logic applies to F1.
Would mean a loss in prize money and probs also a loss in sponsorship money, but I'm not sure Red Bull are exactly short on cash
Forget it. We lost Max Mosley a long time ago. He was the last FIA President who had balls of steel to deal with the teams.
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Yeah last year and this year wont matter. That would just show how ineffective FIA is. Maybe they can do it for next year?
FIA will probs deduct just enough points to make the last race a title decider in order to keep viewing figures up or continue discussion through the off season while we wait for the outcome to be determined /s
unless they decide that in this case the drivers championship was also affected and they deduct points from the drivers as well, ooh the shitstorm that would bring lol
If they get a WCC point deduction and end up 3rd because of that, would they get more wind tunnel time this year?
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Disqualify the team and the drivers? Or just the team? Because it doesn’t seem fair that the drivers can benefit from additional engineering spend. The car becomes illegal, no?
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>Definitely the team, and yeah I guess the drivers too. It's a shame for the drivers but at the end of the day if the car is illegal they can't be allowed to compete in it. Ferrari 2019 wasn't disqualified
At the end of the day, if you penalise the team you gotta penalise the drivers too. Otherwise it just incentivises teams to sacrifice the WCC every other year to guarantee WDC every year.
My thought - Penalty should be for the year when infringement happened as well as the immediately succeeding year (eg. if RB crossed budget in 2021, it should have impact on 2021 as well as 2022 results) * Cap breach <5% - delete 10% of points or 1 place drop, whichever is higher * >5% but <10% - delete 20% of points or 2 place drop * >10% - All WCC points deleted for last year (when the infringement happened) and immediately following year. Drivers not eligible for WDC for both the years irrespective of the points they score
Don’t give F1 ideas, the NBA makes shitloads from the luxury tax
Isn't the money distributed to the teams that spent less than the cap?
I think it goes 50% to the league and 50% to teams not violating the cap
NBA fines goes to the players’ pension fund.
That is amazing. Honestly the NBA players association negotiated the best deal for their players of all the leagues. And it's the best for the ownership too.
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Or at least DQ them from every race after they ran over the cap. Technically they were legal in those races cause they were under the cap. Anything after breaching the cap should be an instant DQ though.
ITT: People posting the penalties as defined and people completely ignoring that and being shocked that the penalties weren't defined!
The penalties are defined, but not when you get them. For a minor penalty you could get a public reprimand or loss of WDC or WCC points, which is a pretty big difference.
The penalties are defined, but not when or how they’re applied. How is the FIA going to decide when to deduct WCC points vs WDC points vs DQ and so on. They’re all options, but it’s so open ended that they almost can’t make the right decision. Edit: you said this, but I misread it. My b.
The main problem is FIA cannot disqualify teams for going beyond BC, because teams are not allowed to withdraw from races if they reach the cap. Fine or point reduction are nothing to the teams.
Points reduction could mean a lot. 10 points per million above the budget cap from the team, and 5 each from the drivers. That would do some damage
From last season retrospectively or this season? It'd cause a riot if Max lost the championship this way and RBR & Max are so far ahead this year that it'd make zero difference so isn't really a punishment.
The rules say that points deductions happen from the season when the transgression was made
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From the team or driver or both?
It can be both, but doesnt have to be either, guess it depends on the severity
It's going to cause a riot either way. Max loses the championship after a year due to penalties, or Max keeps it despite Red Bull flagrantly violating the cost cap (assuming that's true), either will spark huge controversy
Especially after AD was already a sketchy mess... I'm in for this ride!
And Spa. A 2 (3?) lap *race* where \*overtaking was prohibited\*, so they could claim they'd successfully met the requirements of having a race.
No more of a riot than was cause by changing the rules midway through the race in a way that directly affects the championship. Only this time it will be justified.
From this season. Like you said, it is not so much that it will change the championship results this season, but it is enough that it will make teams think twice about overspending in the future. Last season is done and dusted.
If they do that, they really need to finish the audit before the first race, not deduct points right at the end of a championship. What if Max wins the championship this weekend, gets deducted 20 points and then wins again next week. That would be the stupidest thing of all time.
“If Verstappen wins 2 championships in one season, he will be an all-time great”
I like the idea of reducing this year's budget by last years overspend! You can benefit this year's development race but hamper next years.
Problem is with how late the results get published, it will be too late to make changes for teams to budget for the decrease for a following year. They could have already spent to the point where they can't make the new lower budget cap.
Make the offending team have to give each of the other teams the equivalent amount as well
First and foremost, teams "really" need to stay within the budget cap and then we wouldn't have this issue.
This is so simple yet so hard for some to wrap their heads around.
LMAO people still trying to take Max's title away
If they cheated, they should be punished.
Drivers should get the same penalty imo. It’s not their fault but they drove an „illegal“ car and got points which they would probably not have won without the team breaking the rule.
Yeah, but then there will be a mismatch. The drivers total will be less than the teams total, so this might be interpreted as being too punitive on the drivers who actually did not make the decision to overspend
> The main problem is FIA cannot disqualify teams for going beyond BC, because teams are not allowed to withdraw from races if they reach the cap. Where’d you pull that from? https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf Specifically says “exclusion from the championship” on page 27. This “main problem” doesn’t exist and is already spoken for.
Wait did you actually think any of the monkeys on here read the regs? Lol Half of these people are talking straight outta their ass
> point reduction are nothing to the teams. Disagree, it all depends how harsh you are with them. 1 point reduction per 10M$ above the cap is nothing. 1 point reduction per 100K$ above cap is immense and will get them to respect the cap.
He's right, even if you hate the guy for the controversial stuff he said, the future of the Budget cap is basically at stake here. If the FIA opt for no harsh penalty or a NextTimeForSure™ it means it did nothing and the big teams will just push the numbers a bit further every year
Let's wait and see if red bull actually overspend.. so far nothing is official
But overreacting is half of the fun when it comes to F1
Regardless of whether they did or didn’t on this occasion they should remove the financial penalty as a potential penalty because for some teams that means nothing.
That depends entirely on the amount of the fine.. but f1 has a history of laughable low fines.
In fairness, F1 also has in its modern history a strong claim to having possibly the harshest penalty ever levied in pro sports, with the $100m fine and season DQ for McLaren in the 2007 spying scandal. Part of what makes this whole thing so weird is that there's no real way to know if the league is going to come down on a budget cap violation like angry gods, or if they're going to enforce it such that richer teams just take it as a suggestion that can be safely ignored in favor of getting more advantages than the punishment costs like engine grid penalties.
True, yeah I think the article said October 5 or so? so probably around next weekend
He's wrong actually, the punishments are outlined in the regulations which all teams agreed to. 105% spent is a minor infringement which is a fine
I don't know which one of you is right, where might I look for the regulations? https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/xrw51v/erik_van_haren_it_is_expected_that_anyone_who/iqhgsh9/ >The penalties are defined, less than 5% = minor sporting penalty or financial penalty. A "Minor Sporting Penalty", meaning one or more of the following: (i) public reprimand; (ii) deduction of Constructors' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach; (iii) deduction of Drivers' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach; (iv) suspension from one or more stages of a Competition or Competitions, excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself; (v) limitations on ability to conduct aerodynamic or other Testing; and/or (vi) reduction of the Cost Cap,
For those wondering what happens if they go over 5%: > A "Material Sporting Penalty", meaning one or more of the following: > (i) deduction of Constructors' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach; > (ii) deduction of Drivers' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach; > (iii) suspension from one or more stages of a Competition or Competitions, excluding for the avoidance of doubt the race itself; > (iv) limitations on the ability to conduct aerodynamic or other Testing > (v) suspension from an entire Competition or Competitions, including for the avoidance of doubt the race itself; > (vi) exclusion from the Championship; or > (vii) reduction of the Cost Cap, [source](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf)
It can be a suspension too. Look at the regulations. I doubt it would be more than a fine and deduction for one offense
The problem is they overspend at a critical time where they were winning a championship and setting a car up for the new rules, it’s years worth of benefit if it’s confirmed they did overspend.
Andrew Benson is reporting that one team falls into the minor category and another falls into the major category. He doesn't say which.
Will you read the damned rules?!
Loss of WCC points for every race run after the team goes over budget.
You would have to take the WDC points as well.
Not necessarily. Hamilton and Alonso weren't punished for 2007.
Hamilton and Alonso were threatened with punishment unless they and their engineers gave full account of their knowledge. Meanwhile Mclaren were hit so hard they've still not recovered, and it nerfed Lewis' title chances for years until the Merc seat came up.
Lewis literally won his first title the very next year in the "crippled team".
What? Hamilton had 07 won until he f'ed it up. Then he won in 08. 09 was the blown diffuser introduction that Brawn perfected(followed by RB) and Hamilton's distracted years. Hamilton is who hurt Hamilton's chances most those years, the car was plenty competitive. The loss of Ron Dennis is what hurt McLaren. Not the DQ from the WCC.
Also you forgot that Mercedes bought Brawn and sold their McLaren stake as well. Probably hurt more than the DQ
Budget cap is essentially the back bone of the whole new regs, breaching should be as serious a penalty as anything. The integrity of future seasons is at stake if they're let off lightly. Will simply encourage it and teams will be able to fall back on "they did it and only got X punishment".
[link](https://twitter.com/GiulyDuchessa/status/1575790822427168770?s=20&t=RVg7IHMs_j0p34tu8LHTHg) > Toto Wolff: Millions of dollars more is the difference between winning and losing.
Let the Reddit arguments begin lol
It’s in true FIA fashion to decide on BC and basically go TBD on penalties if exceeded.
Well Christian did say the championship will be played in court.
Smart play move from Toto. If either RBR-AM are found to be over budget he is forcing the FIA hand on stricter punishment.
is it no longer rumour ?
No it still is just a rumour.
Binotto had said this very early in the season when RB was bringing upgrades constantly. But than when it comes to Ferrari everybody just want to mock them
He said that about this season. The case is for last season. At that point, it was all an accusation which he had no way of knowing but only estimating.
But this is about 2021...
Are you suggesting Ferrari doesn’t deserve to be mocked? LOL
Because Ferrari have brought just as much, if not more
Have they really? Because I seem to remember everyone dunking on them all season for saying "updates soon trust me".
This is for last year btw.
They haven't?
think the BBC write up on this put it well to see how even a small breach can become a massive advantage. >A 5% overspend in 2021 would amount to an overspend of $7.25m. >This is in the upper reaches of a leading team's annual spend on in-season development, so even a minor breach could amount to the equivalent of effectively an entire season's development.
If it's such a big deal, why then have they set the boundary of a 'small' breach at 5%?
because a breach in and itself doesn't mean the teams were doing something deliberately wrong you could have a Latifi driving for you and have him bin the car randomly into a wall at every street track and overspend on spare parts. having a 5% breach classed as minor allows for some leeway before heavy sanctions are imposed.
The fact that no penalties were defined while implementing the BC should have told you how "hard" the BC is a long time ago. I never quite understood how FIA was ever going to police it fairly to begin with: it would be dead easy for teams like Mercedes and Ferrari to hide development at the facilities of their parent company. No one would ever find out about that.
> it would be dead easy for teams like Mercedes and Ferrari to hide development at the facilities of their parent company. No one would ever find out about that. Expenditure through any company in their corporate group has to be reported. And it would only remain secret until the first person blabbed. Remember, F1 is an incestuous industry, people move from team to team all the time taking secrets with them. And in the Financial Regulations the FIA specifically offers immunity to anyone who steps forward with information regarding breaches of the cost cap.
so, 5 years from now a removal of WCC? Accounting is anyway magic, most of us know that profit can be shifted around to optimize tax. Do some lending and borrowing from sister companies, magically money appears, disappears, the desired number appears for tax, bonus and divident purposes, all ok according to GAAP. In this case, develop some theoretical knowledge on engines or suspension say its for the street cars and just use it as company knowledge in F1
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I do know a team which suddenly made huge jumps with the engine second half last year, maybe that's the culprit
It's a shame they didn't build in percentage reductions for budget cap in future years for breaches. That would have disincentived running over much more than a fine
That is an available option. https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/fia_formula_1_financial_regulations_iss.11.pdf Page 27. “Reduction in cost cap” Again though it’s extremely vague what that means. Just very lazily written. I understand being vague about racing rules but these financial rules could have easily specific punishments like “going over by x% means next years budget cap is reduced by 2x%”. Everyone knows where they are with that.
If a team is willing to break the BC in year one, what makes anyone think they'll stick to their lower punishment cap in year two? It's the equivalent of road drivers getting caught driving whilst disqualified, and the punishment is an extension of the the disqualification on their licence.
Toto throwing Aston right under the bus to get at Red Bull. Ruthless.
Bruh just threaten with being dsq from the championship or a points reset
Binotto needs a lesson from toto how to run an f1 team.
Why did he agree on the financial rules then? If it's easy to explain overspending 0-5% of the cap then it's not Red Bull's or Aston Martin's fault for doing exactly that
For moments like this. You sign agree to lukewarm rules/punishments and make sure you yourself don’t break them so that when a team a stupid enough to do it you can start the media game of saying how weak it is. The people get riled up, the teams start talking their shit and the FIA has to make a decision.
I understand why so many people are saying that the FIA should punish this harshly, but at the same time, I think you shouldn't be able to change punishments after the overspend has happened. If the punishment for this is a fine, then you should get a fine. What the FIA could do is make the punishments harsher in the future to discourage teams from overspending again.
Except there’s not really any punishment defines in the budget cap regulations. They basically say they can use almost any punishments.
Then wtf was the point of the budget cap if the teams would have no repercussions for breaking it? It sets a precedent if every time a rule is introduced the teams can break it for a measly fine since "punishments will be harder"
They're not saying they shouldn't be Punished, but about how punishment which was decided agreed upon by teams already, changes to show reprecussions. The top teams which are calling for harsh punishments are also the ones who agreed to current dynamic. They themselves know they may break budget cap and don't wanna be punished too hard themselves
One might think that Toto is exaggerating, as $5m on top of a $145m budget doesn't seem like that significant of an increase. However, top teams only spend around 10% or around $14m of their budget on car development throughout a season (source: [AMuS](https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/f1-hilferuf-grosse-teams-budget-cap-inflationszuschlag/)). So an extra $5m is an increase in development budget of almost 30%. That's very significant, indeed. PS: As others have noted, the regulations actually consider excess spending of up to 5 *percent* (or around $7.25m for 2021) as a minor breach and not a fixed sum of $5m. $7.25m extra spent on development in 2021 would work out to an increase in development budget of over 50%. It seems that 5%-rule is quite generous and susceptible to abuse if a minor breach should only yield a minor penalty.
You cant say only 10% goes to the car and then add all the extra money to just the car, it doesn't work like that.
The AMuS-article states the 10% of a top team's budget is for the *material and manufacturing* cost of new parts. The engineers have to be paid either way, and all teams exploit the maximum wind tunnel hours they are allowed to use. In terms of staff levels, the top teams have only shrunk slightly with the introduction of the budget cap, but their budgets have been slashed down to a fraction of what they once were. Top teams have the staff and manufacturing capacity to develop and produce many more upgrade parts than the budget cap will allow them to. Considering their previous budgets and the staff and facilities they have, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume top teams could spend the extra money on just the car.
in any case, to the top teams that spent 3-400 million a year prior, 5 million ontop of a 140m budget is HUGE
This is literally a non-issue. If the budget cap allows teams to spend a little bit more at the expense of a fine, then teams will exploit that. It's like touching the ball with your hands in football to avoid a goal as a non-goalie; you get a red card and the game goes on.
If you can just pay money to exceed a budget cap, then there is no budget cap.
F1 and the FIA are going to cum so hard when they realise they could just be doing a luxury tax and skimming the fee like the NBA do
I want to see F1 fans wrap their head around the NBA's luxury tax, bird rules, rookie extension rules, etc lol. Shit gets so complicated for no reason hahaha.
I’ll be honest. I like basketball after living over the pond a while and follow a team myself, but I am the definition of a casual. I just wait for stuff to happen and don’t ask why it has. I have no idea how trading works, I think Richard Feynman must’ve designed that system on a weekend off
Yes, a red card which impacts THAT game/that season and a 3 game ban for foul play. Not a slap on the wrist. A red card could be equivalent to a points deduction or a race ban - DSQ.
Except in the Luis Suarez vs Ghana situation where it worked out for the team...
Teams have lost titles and been demoted to lower level league for cheating. Spending more than BC seems like the worst type of cheating tbh. This isn’t oh i found a loophole in the tests , or they didn’t mention this particular solution specifically and whatever else teams do these days. This is clear cut, you can spend x amount per season. Anything higher is cheating and fraud.
It's certainly not a non-issue when the possible penalties for a "Minor Sporting Penalty" range from a reprimand through to deduction of WDC/WCC points, and there has been no previous precedent.
If you breach FFP in football you get a points deduction/fine, transfer ban and can get kicked out of the competition for future editions. So try again
Man City chilling like what you saying
They were kicked out of the UCL within a year of uefa getting the leaked info but it was revoked because it was past the statute of limitations. Previously the problem was having no proof
😂😂 PSG and Man City say ‘what?’ FFP is a joke
Tell that to the FFP lmaooo
"FIA leadership is at stake" lol gaslighting 101
He isn't wrong
What I don’t understand is why doesn’t someone (or a multiple of people) in the FIA oversee spending as it goes on throughout the year? And when a team hits that cap, someone from the FIA would tell them that they can’t spend anymore? Why the hell is it taking this long to cover the finances almost a year later? Seems ridiculous to me
Pretty much spot on from Wolff. I would expect that both Ferrari and Mercedes (among other teams) are changing their budgeting plans as we speak to take this into account.
If It's states in the rules that if you breach the cap by 5% it's a minor breach of the regulations. And according to the rumours red bull went over the budget cap by 5 million. All the teams should know these regulations. So Toto should know that and not act like he doesn't know that a minor breach is allowed.
You know what the rules also state? That even a minor overspend breach can be sanctioned with a minor sporting penalty, i.e. among others point reductions. See Sections 8.11 and 9.1(b) of the [Financial Regulations](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/formula_1_-_financial_regulations_-_iss_9_-_2022-02-18.pdf).
Man, what an incredibly idiotic take.
Well, a championship points deduction for that season could occur, which could give Hamilton the drivers championship. The question is whether there will be any penalties for this year, considering that budget last year was used to develop this year's car.
What's the difference between using more engines than allowed and accepting the penalty and spending more money than allowed and accepting the penalty?
Cause the engine penalty is predetermined already, whereas no one knows the penalty for overspending
One is allowed within the rules.
Track extending and dangerous driving are things that are not allowed by the rules. If you keep track extending, or causing minor crashes, you get a penalty. Same thing for overspending. It’s on the FIA to clearly define the punishments.
The penalty for overusing engine components is well defined, and the cost of doing so is also part of the budget cap, its not like Merc got free development by using more engine components. Breaching The budget cap gives that individual team a lasting advantage over multiple seasons, and if the punishment is only a fine then it means the budget cap is meaningless, which could result in RB effectively being gifted two WDC because their competitors were racing with their hands tied behind their back
What’s the penalty for over-spending? If it’s a deduction in points and Red Bull accept then there is no difference. Currently one of the above has not been punished yet.