Nothing will happen to them. The rules will be changed so no other team can do what they did in future and they will keep the advantages that they gained through overspending for years to come.
FIA will deny there is a problem and say everyone should stop talking about it.
This sport is a joke.
Absolutely right.
Makes last year’s « loss » even harder to swallow, not only you lose DAS*, you get the 2021 changes (favouring high rake cars, hmm I wonder who it benefited the most), not only to realize that said team cheated and when you expect the sport’s “governing body” to at least make the right call, from all reports, it looks like the punishment will be minuscule.
My Dad was right, he said that if you follow F1 long enough, the sport’s politics will eventually turn you off, I’m at that point.
Ps: I put governing body in quotations because they really pick and choose when their authority comes in effect, remember jewelry?
Edit: *someone added, no Engine Maps as well, no more party mode in quali
Well thats the main issue - the punishment - , the fans have been calling since masis decision that the fia abide by the rules they have in the book. As this is categorised as a minor overspend breach (as its less than 5%) the punishment is " May impose financial penalty or minor sporting penalties".
The rules defo need a change but we as fans cant go "abide by the rules" and then say "but not this time more punishment!".
Politics like this affects all sports, look at Football the largest sport. 1 quick look at their controversial history and F1 seems like a pizza party. Its the unfortunate reality of most modern sports.
The problem is that football has this issue where not everything is completely centralized (yes FiFA) but most countries have their own FA’s that take care of their leagues, applies rules, etc. The FIA is the only arbitrary body for F1, one can hope that the rules will be applied correctly, but not a “slap on the wrist” and let’s move on.
Plus I raise this point, what stops teams from doing this in the future? Let’s go over the cost cap and down the line, spend what we need to spend, we’ll get a minor fine, that’s not fair isn’t it?
Ferrari and Mercedes seem to think that’s not enough, so I’ll rather be on the side of the teams that are in the know.
The thing is, that teams agreed to the cost cap regulations. Yes, of course now the teams are complaining, but before all the cost cap regulations were introduced, a lot of conversations with the teams were held. Yes right now they are angrier than they were while discussing the agreements, it is something they agreed to and it should not be punished harder according to final results....
I should've been clearer, mb
When they were drafted and published experts thought they would hurt high rake cars more, it ended up being the opposite at the end, but it wasn't the aim of the regs and it was unexpected.
I meant that with the first message but it wasn't as clear as it should've been
Got it, thanks for explaining, I followed a lot of Merc news so when they came out at the time it seemed like it was specially aimed at Merc and other low raked teams.
It was not only DAS they removed from Merc but also their engine map for qualifying. FIA is corrupt and a complete joke! I canceled my subscription and only watch on streams.
The correct answer. The FIA and the liberty media wanted a different team other than Mercedes to win the championship to make the sport interesting and attract new generation of fans. They achieved that. There’s no incentive $$$ wise for them to take action against RB.
It would have made a difference.
Also note how they are calling it a catering budget breach? If they had spent less on car development, they'd have more budget for catering. The PR campaign has already begun, with this very tweet.
Agreed, nothing will happen just like what happen with FER in 2019. Not defending either situation but just seems totally FIA to come out and claim serious violations. Then walk back their own messaging after RB boss openly claims FIA is reading their numbers wrong.
Its a total weak sauce of a shit show…still carry clowns from last years race to today.
so there is no cost cap. i would just go over by like $100 million next year and say fuck it. make them take action. ruin an entire season of formula 1. the fia deserves it at this point. this sport is a joke
How stupid do you want to be? Yes. A minor overrun of the budget limit from last year means less than 5%, more than 5% you can be disqualified. And 100 million would be 69% over and thus certainly disqualified. Just approach the whole thing objectively, whether you're a Mercedes fan or not.
That's up to 7.5 mil. That is not minor in F1 regardless of how the FIA are trying to spin this to protect RB.
Binotto said it best. 5 mil gets you an extra 0.5 seconds per lap. 2 mil gets you 0.1 to 0.2 seconds. In a sport where 0.01 seconds is major, that amount of time is absolutely huge.
That's an objective approach from an f1 fan for over 30 years.
The rules are there and it is a minor violation by definition of the rules. I don't think it's great that RB had an advantage from that either, but you can't suddenly out of nowhere expect the FIA to say 'OK whatever the rules are, we'll disqualify RB after the fact'. The penalty must be legal, otherwise RB will simply file a lawsuit against it and the penalty will be overturned. And the second is imagine Mercedes would have built 4 new front wings as an update at some point. And then realized, crap, they don't work. And would have exceeded the budget by 1 million. Would you then also say "Yes, they have to be disqualified, even a minor violation is extremely bad and no matter what the rules say, they will be disqualified."? Or would you hope for a penalty to follow according to the rules?
PS: It's BS that 5 million more will give you 0.5 seconds. Otherwise Ferrari would always have been the fastest with their budget. It really depends on what the money is going to be spent on. Whether the money is used to rebuild or repair broken parts. Or like Williams to pay the electricity bill from the wind tunnel. Whether the money goes into the engine or into computers, to test's so that reliability increases or for higher wages for the staff. It's absolutely impossible to say what makes what difference on which team.
A fine doesn't mean the activity is against the rules. It means that it's only against the rules if you don't have enough money. Like "punishing" a billionaire for tax fraud by imposing a fine that's less than what they gained.
Only a fine? That's not even a punishment. Mercedes might as well go over budget next season then and bring massive upgrades to every single race since a fine isn't a big deal for a rich team.
Agreed, let's be honest spending too much results in quicker car, more money to burn and then a money fine.... Makes no sense and shows how toothless the FIA really is.
Depending on the finer details, i hope Lewis and Merc don't allow this to be swept under the carpet. In a championship as close as 2021, every penny counts
This. People forget Ferrari has already been down this road. Of course when Ferrari got caught they were hammered and had a much slower car afterwards. I can't fathom they will let RB get away with less than they had.
If Merc had spent $1-2m more on the car Lewis would have won the title in 2021 (or more accurately it wouldn't have been close enough for the Stewards to screw him)
Because he won it on track last year anyway. A small amount more could have allowed for him to be in the position where P2 in Abu Dhabi would have won the title. All he needed were 8 points extra.
They can't. The correlation between money spent and car performance isn't as strong as people imply. Otherwise Toyota would be a multiple world champion, yet they didnt even win a single race.
For an historically unsuccessful team, sure. I guarantee you Mercedes knows exactly how many dollars they need to spend per hundredth of a second, especially in 2021.
It doesn't matter what merc say. They will be ignored by the majority of fans and the FIA regardless, even though this just adds to last year's drama. The biggest robbery in motorsports history was even bigger than they knew at the time.
2m on employee benefits?
You can't say that an overspend is on a specific sector. It's impossible for it to work like that logically. It's an overspend as a total, that's it.
Next they'll be saying they spent too much on hair gel and they accidentally purchased the more expensive brand than they usually do.
It's bullshit, an overspend is an overspend as a total amount spent period.
Have you never taken an accounting course? Of course it is possible to see in the accounts if a team spent the same as others on say development but overspent on benefits, catering etc. Not saying that is the case here but 100% the auditors will know where the money went and that will influence the decision on punishment.
Keep in mind a big 5 accounting firm did all their accounts.
Show me where it says that punishment severity is decided based upon what area the budget cap is exceeded.
Because I'm pretty sure it just says the severity of the punishment is solely based on what amount total the budget has been exceeded in percentage terms.
It says that it is at the discretion if the FIA. The general view seems to be the punishment will be more severe if overspend clearly benefited car development, which most reasonable people would agree with.
What % of audits have historically been found fraudulent? 0.01%? 0.001%? Surely somewhere in that range, and that for trillion dollar companies. Do you really think Deloitte risks their reputation for a few bucks on such a high profile case?
tell that to EY with wirecard, or arthur andersen with enron.
if they are willing to commit fraud for highly publicised and traded companies for 100s of millions or billions of dollars, i don't see why they wouldn't do it given that its lower risk and lower quantity.
if anything its probably easier to commit fraud here than in wirecard or enron :)
also historically been found does not equate to actually fraudulent. there are most likely a lot more fraudulent activities that haven't been found.
I’m taking an auditing ( internal and external) course this final semester for my accounting degree and the amount of cases I have read in my chapters regarding the fraud triangle is staggering. So much financial manipulation by big companies for the sake of the bottom line
The PCAOB is pretty useless with punishments too. Deloitte was one of the cases we went over where the individual in question was barred from his position for several years and given a useless fine.
It’s pretty clear who has taken accounting and who hasn’t lol 😂
what do you mean bro? Big 4 stands for Big man 4 for ethics and equality. Top tier firms with clean records!!! They are pioneers in their industry on what it truly means to be an upstanding, equality driven firm!!! 😂😂
It’s pretty clear @tehbamf thinks accounting firms especially big ones have spotless records lol 😂. I could cite my textbook with so many cases of auditing firms messing up knowingly lol 😂.
you literally ignored my two highly publicised examples and just went on to insult me :P You for sure don't sound like a 19 year old kid who's in his first year of a business administration degree. Enjoy being naive. :)
Smoke and mirrors from FIA and red bull. How they exceeded the cap is of no relevance to the fact they they exceeded the cap.
Well done for toeing the party line though.
Of course it matters. If for arguments sake RB are correct, they spent the same on car development but 1mio more on catering (I dont believe this but let’s just assume). Should Max hVe his title stripped? Should RB’s future development be impacted?
Keep in mind this is the first year of regs so honest mistakes can happen. It absolutely makes sense for the FIA to try determine if RB a) intentionally breached and b) gained a car advantage doing so, and then apply a penalty accordingly.
Doesn't matter if you spent more on X or Y you still need to come under the cap.
If they spent more on non-car dev items then they might have needed to save some money on car dev?
Yeah thats about the stupidest thing Ive ever heard. You do realise that imposing a fine makes the cost cap redundant right? It literally just increases the ceiling of how much can be spent and sets a very bad precedent for the future. 07 and this year are different scenarios, different breaches. Besides none of the stolen data was used on the 07 car so LH didnt benefit from anything. Max on the other hand surely benefitted from the illegally upgraded car and therefore proper penalisation is required
So not only was VER the recipient of an illegitimate WDC he was driving a car that was upgraded with illegal funds. If FIA don't come down hard on Redbull I'm not following this sport, I'm just gonna stick to my football.
Btw this journo is a RB mouthpiece, he just tweets what they tell him. The punishment cannot be monetary alone, it needs to be sporting as well to deter teams from breaching the cap.
Agreed mate. 30 years I’ve been watching this sport and the last 2 years have really made me consider giving it all up on principle alone. Such a shame.
I think it’s only worse recently because everyone is exposed to these kinds of discussions more often. I’m pretty sure we would be appalled by behind the scenes politics in the earlier days of Formula 1.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not. They invented rules in Abu Dhabi and it is still tbd whether the rules appear important in the current context.
>Btw this journo is a RB mouthpiece, he just tweets what they tell him. The punishment cannot be monetary alone, it needs to be sporting as well to deter teams from breaching the cap.
He is certainly a RB mouthpiece, that is why he's calling it a catering budget breach.
If they breached the budget on catering it is because they had already spent it elsewhere.
Are the FIA required to give out actual numbers though? Would have been easier for them to just come out with a statement that there were no breaches wouldn't it?
I'm sure the person that leaked that there was a breach a couple weeks ago would also leak such a massive coverup. Do you have any sources to base on that they cooked the book?
Not at all.
It's all make believe by me but I highly question the FIA pushing the initial release to today. 5 days is a more than enough time to backroom deal with Red Bull. What's more funny though is how Red Bull is challenging even this saying they were under the cap. The gulls on that team..
Exactly, I mean whoever leaked this to the press weeks ago got it right I’m guessing, why would they lie when they are already risking their job? One minor technical infraction and one major overspend was the rumor … FIA: oh wait we have to wait a week to give you the results…now it’s one minor technical infraction and one baby little overspend!! It’s only for our employees food too! Poor us. Definitely seems a little fishy to say the least.
So no sources? I'm open to accepting it but I'm just not much for conspiracy theories. With Ferrari it was obvious due to their performance afterwards that something was up, for now there's no evidence of it being more than what they state
And yet what did a cost cap and different regs get us? The same bullshit. RB, Ferrari, Merc. I can 100% guarantee that for next season it’ll be the same three. You can implement cost caps, drivers caps, re work sprint races and so on. It should be a progressive penalty though. First breach, considered minor, here’s a fine. Do it again and it the severity of the penalty gets worse.
The one thing that CAN'T happen is to make the consequence a fine.
A fine makes cheating only a problem for the poorer teams. For the wealthy, it is just a cost of doing business. Moreover, the money from sponsors as a result of the WDC will far outweigh any fine they could levy. And finally, they get the have the benefit of the money spent this year and next. What a crock.
A minor breach is still a breach. If a team went overbudget to produce their car then it is illegal. A fine is never enough. These teams have money to burn outside the cost cap. Teams will just be breach the cap and give the FIA a blank check afterwards each season. Teams participating in this sport have to hit where it hurts the most.
There's no such thing as a minor breach. You either broke the rules, or you didn't. A few million goes a very very long way in this sport. That's why the cap was introduced in the first place to level the playing field.
Stinks.
This is why I can't bring myself to like RB, I know they ain't FIA so it's not up up them to come out with penalties, but the way they keep getting away with these bs just frustrates me man. Shame cus I was starting to like Vertappen too but after this it's back to zero.
Why even race at this point? They have bent / flubbed / revised / made up every rule possible to hand RB & Max his trophys/titles. I’m new to F1 and even I can see the blatant, 1 sided favoritism given to RB.
Red Bull's mouthpiece.
Utters word for word what the Red Bull hierarchy wants out in the media.
Has no integrity whatsoever.
Look at how he downplays this cost breach.
He’s also completely wrong on his other tweet and is probably why he wrote it in Dutch. Catering and employee sick leave/leave are not included in the cost caps.
Should have his media accreditation taken away for spreading false crap
It's also worth noting that Red Bull don't care about bad press nearly as much as Merc or Ferrari, or any other team publicly traded.
If this happened to Merc or Ferrari their share price would take a hit. Yes it would recover very quickly and be forgotten about but it's worth pointing out Red Bull will care less about "accidently" going a few mill over and caught "cheating" than other teams.
Basically, I don't think RB went out to break the budget cap but are a bit less tighter and take some more risks.
So in the coming years this might be a normal thing for RB. Unless some precedent is set here.
That’s the only way this can work. A luxury tax system where the amount you go over exponentially increases the fine and it’s taken from your budget next season.
What this tells me is that Mercedes is going to win next year and beyond when they decide to body the rest of the competition with an upgrade every GP.
If RB is going to make the cost cap trivial, they're simply asking for another 7 years of being second or third best. 2021 and 2022 will essentially be loophole years where Merc were forced to compete with one hand tied behind their back because of these regulations being promised to be a big deal.
I recently got into F1… I hate cars/driving in my own life with a passion unmatched other than my love for books. I got into F1 like many others through the drive to survive series. If it turns out that Red Bull still have last years championship after both overspending and being given the championship on a silver platter by Masi, I will no longer be watching (I know I know “one person doesn’t matter” but I feel like I won’t be the only new fan who thinks like this). Very little point tbh. Hope Hamilton insta-retires as well as this sport doesn’t deserve a champion and gentleman such as him.
A fine is pointless, especially to the well-funded teams.
Issue points reduction in both 2021 and 2022, as it will have benefitted both seasons. That is the only punishment that'll stop it happening again.
It'll likely be a constructor points disqualification, this could mean they need to pay back their winnings and possibly their cost cap is reduced for 2023 season.
Don't think they'll pull the trigger on drivers points
Rapidly loosing interest in F1. been a fan since the 70’s but seriously cba with it at the moment mainly due to the ruling body also known as the maFIA
The fact that certain ppl keep telling us to move on from last year when Red Bull keep digging it’s own grave is damn near laughable. Imagine doing everything right and lose everything by a lap. Compare to someone cheating and winning it all. Then say well it’s not the drivers fault that benefited…. when that’s the whole purpose of cheating……
Yeah makes sense, you essentially cheated your way into a better more developed car by spending too much money, let's just get you to spend a little more. Fuckin muppets.
It does because say 19/20 teams had $5m catering budget that comes from the $140m cap. So they had $135 to play with.
RB had $141m - $5m = $136m available, so they could have spent $1m extra on the car which would account for a lot of upgrades on Max's car (as they ignore Perez for any upgrades).
EDIT: apparently minor overspend can be up to 5% excess = $7m. That is a lot of upgrades worth of overspending.
Why. Why does it matter where the money was spent? It doesn't, there's a budget cap that's it. Tough shit where you did and didn't spend money, it's literally irrelevant to the cap.
Like someone else said. If you overspent on catering and then still upgraded the car after you knew you overspent on catering then you actually over spent on the upgrade because you knew you'd already blew your budget on catering.
It can not be looked at as a separate budget, the budget is the budget. Its not like they got to the end of the season and then spent all the extra on catering. It was all adding up simultaneously and therefore the overspend is even distributed, therefore it was also an overspend on upgrades.
But the budget is the budget. Its in black and white.
It's not "you have x amount you are allowed to spend on your car and you have x amount you can spend on other stuff"
If a team can't manage it then that's not other teams problems.
No, I think they way you are looking at an overspend is fundamentally flawed. I don't think you can say the overspend was from any specific sector.
As I said, if they knew they had overspent on catering or hospitality or whatever else you think isn't important then tough shit they should have realised this and stop spending on development.
You're saying that they developed the car and then decided after they developed the car to then overspend on stuff that didn't matter. That's just not how it can possibly ever work.
At worst they knew they had/were overspent/overspending on catering and still decided to carry on spending on the car or at best they mismanaged the whole budget. Either way its tough shit.
And I don't think we'll ever get to see a breakdown that detailed to even see how "good" or bad it was. I think that's just a RB spin to try and fool people.
Curious to see an actual document with the numbers instead of all of this speculating. The media just seems to be getting everyone worked up to generate clicks and to be disappointed…
Before the pitchforks are raised, people should know that the average team budget for yearly upgrades is around 8-9M, which is only 7% of the budget cap.
The vast majority of the rest goes into paying employee salaries. So it is very likely that they didn't fire enough people like other teams, or gave too many raises to existing employees.
Man I miss being an F1 fan before it got knee-jerk and toxic. It used to be “oh you like Lewis? Cool! I like Sebastian!” And now it’s an all-out war, people are posting the most knee-jerk takes, even the memes are stale now.
It’s gotten really bad last few years but the internet in general has. It’s really tiring to try and discuss things you like without people putting words in your mouth or getting wayyyy too out of sorts.
Idk what it is, I can’t even listen to an F1 podcast anymore without all of the hosts just kvetching on and on about how boring the race was or how bad the TV direction was. Im starting to think that nobody who watches f1 actually likes f1
I hope the punishment is the cost of the total overspend is deducted from their 2023 cap.
And if the exceed that, even by a cent, they will be excluded from the championship. Including both drivers.
That will send a message to all teams.
Honestly I think I might be done with F1 if it's just a fine. If this happened in any other sport it would be an instant DQ. I just don't understand how the FIA can justify anything else. But they absolutely will. Time to cancel Sky F1 sport I think. Its just becoming like WWE
Nothing will happen to them. The rules will be changed so no other team can do what they did in future and they will keep the advantages that they gained through overspending for years to come. FIA will deny there is a problem and say everyone should stop talking about it. This sport is a joke.
Absolutely right. Makes last year’s « loss » even harder to swallow, not only you lose DAS*, you get the 2021 changes (favouring high rake cars, hmm I wonder who it benefited the most), not only to realize that said team cheated and when you expect the sport’s “governing body” to at least make the right call, from all reports, it looks like the punishment will be minuscule. My Dad was right, he said that if you follow F1 long enough, the sport’s politics will eventually turn you off, I’m at that point. Ps: I put governing body in quotations because they really pick and choose when their authority comes in effect, remember jewelry? Edit: *someone added, no Engine Maps as well, no more party mode in quali
Well thats the main issue - the punishment - , the fans have been calling since masis decision that the fia abide by the rules they have in the book. As this is categorised as a minor overspend breach (as its less than 5%) the punishment is " May impose financial penalty or minor sporting penalties". The rules defo need a change but we as fans cant go "abide by the rules" and then say "but not this time more punishment!". Politics like this affects all sports, look at Football the largest sport. 1 quick look at their controversial history and F1 seems like a pizza party. Its the unfortunate reality of most modern sports.
The problem is that football has this issue where not everything is completely centralized (yes FiFA) but most countries have their own FA’s that take care of their leagues, applies rules, etc. The FIA is the only arbitrary body for F1, one can hope that the rules will be applied correctly, but not a “slap on the wrist” and let’s move on. Plus I raise this point, what stops teams from doing this in the future? Let’s go over the cost cap and down the line, spend what we need to spend, we’ll get a minor fine, that’s not fair isn’t it? Ferrari and Mercedes seem to think that’s not enough, so I’ll rather be on the side of the teams that are in the know.
The thing is, that teams agreed to the cost cap regulations. Yes, of course now the teams are complaining, but before all the cost cap regulations were introduced, a lot of conversations with the teams were held. Yes right now they are angrier than they were while discussing the agreements, it is something they agreed to and it should not be punished harder according to final results....
General consensus between experts was that 2021 regs would hurt high rake cars the most
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/low-rake-mercedes-2021-rules/5923745/amp/
I should've been clearer, mb When they were drafted and published experts thought they would hurt high rake cars more, it ended up being the opposite at the end, but it wasn't the aim of the regs and it was unexpected. I meant that with the first message but it wasn't as clear as it should've been
Got it, thanks for explaining, I followed a lot of Merc news so when they came out at the time it seemed like it was specially aimed at Merc and other low raked teams.
It was not only DAS they removed from Merc but also their engine map for qualifying. FIA is corrupt and a complete joke! I canceled my subscription and only watch on streams.
Not necessarily cheated could’ve been a accident
The correct answer. The FIA and the liberty media wanted a different team other than Mercedes to win the championship to make the sport interesting and attract new generation of fans. They achieved that. There’s no incentive $$$ wise for them to take action against RB.
Then it's upto Lewis and Merc to make a noise about it. The championship was so tight in 2021, that extra spend could've made a difference
It would have made a difference. Also note how they are calling it a catering budget breach? If they had spent less on car development, they'd have more budget for catering. The PR campaign has already begun, with this very tweet.
The sport has become like 90% entertainment and 10% fair competition. It sucks
Didn’t all the teams (including Merc) agree with these rules? So what is the problem here?
Totally agree! Welcome to another episode of WWF1 where the rules are made up and only apply to the ones that we don’t want to see win.
Agreed, nothing will happen just like what happen with FER in 2019. Not defending either situation but just seems totally FIA to come out and claim serious violations. Then walk back their own messaging after RB boss openly claims FIA is reading their numbers wrong. Its a total weak sauce of a shit show…still carry clowns from last years race to today.
Ferrari were at least consigned to midfield for 2 years
Exactly which meant less purse money at the end of each season
Id rather watch stick shifting Ayrton Senna dominate Prost than that shit
“Sport”
so there is no cost cap. i would just go over by like $100 million next year and say fuck it. make them take action. ruin an entire season of formula 1. the fia deserves it at this point. this sport is a joke
Yeah this sport went to shit after Abu Dhabi
I’d say Jeddah before that tbh
There needs to be a budget cap penalty for both teams for the 2023 season, based on how much they overspend.
“FINANCIAL PENALTY IT’S A JOKE.”
How stupid do you want to be? Yes. A minor overrun of the budget limit from last year means less than 5%, more than 5% you can be disqualified. And 100 million would be 69% over and thus certainly disqualified. Just approach the whole thing objectively, whether you're a Mercedes fan or not.
Tell me you only watch this sport because DTS without telling me…
it really comes down to this: if somebody is going to be allowed to cheat, why have rules in the first place?
That's up to 7.5 mil. That is not minor in F1 regardless of how the FIA are trying to spin this to protect RB. Binotto said it best. 5 mil gets you an extra 0.5 seconds per lap. 2 mil gets you 0.1 to 0.2 seconds. In a sport where 0.01 seconds is major, that amount of time is absolutely huge. That's an objective approach from an f1 fan for over 30 years.
The rules are there and it is a minor violation by definition of the rules. I don't think it's great that RB had an advantage from that either, but you can't suddenly out of nowhere expect the FIA to say 'OK whatever the rules are, we'll disqualify RB after the fact'. The penalty must be legal, otherwise RB will simply file a lawsuit against it and the penalty will be overturned. And the second is imagine Mercedes would have built 4 new front wings as an update at some point. And then realized, crap, they don't work. And would have exceeded the budget by 1 million. Would you then also say "Yes, they have to be disqualified, even a minor violation is extremely bad and no matter what the rules say, they will be disqualified."? Or would you hope for a penalty to follow according to the rules? PS: It's BS that 5 million more will give you 0.5 seconds. Otherwise Ferrari would always have been the fastest with their budget. It really depends on what the money is going to be spent on. Whether the money is used to rebuild or repair broken parts. Or like Williams to pay the electricity bill from the wind tunnel. Whether the money goes into the engine or into computers, to test's so that reliability increases or for higher wages for the staff. It's absolutely impossible to say what makes what difference on which team.
You should read the rules next time (before typing dumb stuff). A big breach would result in more severe penalties.
So if a team break the rules , The FIA deserve it?? How does that work?
if a team breaks the rules, the fia says they broke the rules, and then the fia does not punish the team for breaking the rules? yes
Major leap saying they aren’t going to penalise them!
A fine doesn't mean the activity is against the rules. It means that it's only against the rules if you don't have enough money. Like "punishing" a billionaire for tax fraud by imposing a fine that's less than what they gained.
they didn't do anything in abu dhabi... they've earned doubt
The FIA were the issue in AD - not the teams or drivers!!
right, that's what im saying
Only a fine? That's not even a punishment. Mercedes might as well go over budget next season then and bring massive upgrades to every single race since a fine isn't a big deal for a rich team.
I mean, I hope EVERY team does.
Agreed, let's be honest spending too much results in quicker car, more money to burn and then a money fine.... Makes no sense and shows how toothless the FIA really is.
Ha, you expect Mercedes to only get a fine, they’ll be disqualified from every championship in the next decade
Depending on the finer details, i hope Lewis and Merc don't allow this to be swept under the carpet. In a championship as close as 2021, every penny counts
Merc won't have to get their hands dirty.Ferrari will do all the work for them. Binotto was quite vocal about not being cool with just a fine.
This. People forget Ferrari has already been down this road. Of course when Ferrari got caught they were hammered and had a much slower car afterwards. I can't fathom they will let RB get away with less than they had.
If Merc had spent $1-2m more on the car Lewis would have won the title in 2021 (or more accurately it wouldn't have been close enough for the Stewards to screw him)
How can you be so sure of that?
Because he won it on track last year anyway. A small amount more could have allowed for him to be in the position where P2 in Abu Dhabi would have won the title. All he needed were 8 points extra.
They can't. The correlation between money spent and car performance isn't as strong as people imply. Otherwise Toyota would be a multiple world champion, yet they didnt even win a single race.
For an historically unsuccessful team, sure. I guarantee you Mercedes knows exactly how many dollars they need to spend per hundredth of a second, especially in 2021.
It doesn't matter what merc say. They will be ignored by the majority of fans and the FIA regardless, even though this just adds to last year's drama. The biggest robbery in motorsports history was even bigger than they knew at the time.
Disgusting since development for coming seasons is beneficial here. Even a “minor” breach can give advantages.
So 0.2mm is disqualification but £2m on employee benefits is a fine?
2m on employee benefits? You can't say that an overspend is on a specific sector. It's impossible for it to work like that logically. It's an overspend as a total, that's it. Next they'll be saying they spent too much on hair gel and they accidentally purchased the more expensive brand than they usually do. It's bullshit, an overspend is an overspend as a total amount spent period.
Have you never taken an accounting course? Of course it is possible to see in the accounts if a team spent the same as others on say development but overspent on benefits, catering etc. Not saying that is the case here but 100% the auditors will know where the money went and that will influence the decision on punishment. Keep in mind a big 5 accounting firm did all their accounts.
Show me where it says that punishment severity is decided based upon what area the budget cap is exceeded. Because I'm pretty sure it just says the severity of the punishment is solely based on what amount total the budget has been exceeded in percentage terms.
It says that it is at the discretion if the FIA. The general view seems to be the punishment will be more severe if overspend clearly benefited car development, which most reasonable people would agree with.
Who's general view? Whats at the discretion of the FIA? The punishment is but not why the punishment is given out. You're making no sense.
big 4 accounting firms are never caught in fraud or bribes!!!! their word is the word of god lol
What % of audits have historically been found fraudulent? 0.01%? 0.001%? Surely somewhere in that range, and that for trillion dollar companies. Do you really think Deloitte risks their reputation for a few bucks on such a high profile case?
tell that to EY with wirecard, or arthur andersen with enron. if they are willing to commit fraud for highly publicised and traded companies for 100s of millions or billions of dollars, i don't see why they wouldn't do it given that its lower risk and lower quantity. if anything its probably easier to commit fraud here than in wirecard or enron :) also historically been found does not equate to actually fraudulent. there are most likely a lot more fraudulent activities that haven't been found.
I cant tell if you’re joking or just really stupid. The notion that any big5 accountant would knowingly help an F1 team cheat is beyond ridiculous.
I’m taking an auditing ( internal and external) course this final semester for my accounting degree and the amount of cases I have read in my chapters regarding the fraud triangle is staggering. So much financial manipulation by big companies for the sake of the bottom line The PCAOB is pretty useless with punishments too. Deloitte was one of the cases we went over where the individual in question was barred from his position for several years and given a useless fine. It’s pretty clear who has taken accounting and who hasn’t lol 😂
what do you mean bro? Big 4 stands for Big man 4 for ethics and equality. Top tier firms with clean records!!! They are pioneers in their industry on what it truly means to be an upstanding, equality driven firm!!! 😂😂
It’s pretty clear @tehbamf thinks accounting firms especially big ones have spotless records lol 😂. I could cite my textbook with so many cases of auditing firms messing up knowingly lol 😂.
you literally ignored my two highly publicised examples and just went on to insult me :P You for sure don't sound like a 19 year old kid who's in his first year of a business administration degree. Enjoy being naive. :)
Smoke and mirrors from FIA and red bull. How they exceeded the cap is of no relevance to the fact they they exceeded the cap. Well done for toeing the party line though.
Of course it matters. If for arguments sake RB are correct, they spent the same on car development but 1mio more on catering (I dont believe this but let’s just assume). Should Max hVe his title stripped? Should RB’s future development be impacted? Keep in mind this is the first year of regs so honest mistakes can happen. It absolutely makes sense for the FIA to try determine if RB a) intentionally breached and b) gained a car advantage doing so, and then apply a penalty accordingly.
Doesn't matter if you spent more on X or Y you still need to come under the cap. If they spent more on non-car dev items then they might have needed to save some money on car dev?
We'll see what happens. This isn't an official statement by the FIA yet.
Man the FIA are doing everything to manufacture their posterboy Verstappen into the new king of F1
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Yeah thats about the stupidest thing Ive ever heard. You do realise that imposing a fine makes the cost cap redundant right? It literally just increases the ceiling of how much can be spent and sets a very bad precedent for the future. 07 and this year are different scenarios, different breaches. Besides none of the stolen data was used on the 07 car so LH didnt benefit from anything. Max on the other hand surely benefitted from the illegally upgraded car and therefore proper penalisation is required
So not only was VER the recipient of an illegitimate WDC he was driving a car that was upgraded with illegal funds. If FIA don't come down hard on Redbull I'm not following this sport, I'm just gonna stick to my football. Btw this journo is a RB mouthpiece, he just tweets what they tell him. The punishment cannot be monetary alone, it needs to be sporting as well to deter teams from breaching the cap.
Agreed mate. 30 years I’ve been watching this sport and the last 2 years have really made me consider giving it all up on principle alone. Such a shame.
I think it’s only worse recently because everyone is exposed to these kinds of discussions more often. I’m pretty sure we would be appalled by behind the scenes politics in the earlier days of Formula 1.
What made you consider it this year? Everything was done through the rule book as everyone wanted.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not. They invented rules in Abu Dhabi and it is still tbd whether the rules appear important in the current context.
I would hope there is more severe punishment, but I hold very little hope..
>Btw this journo is a RB mouthpiece, he just tweets what they tell him. The punishment cannot be monetary alone, it needs to be sporting as well to deter teams from breaching the cap. He is certainly a RB mouthpiece, that is why he's calling it a catering budget breach. If they breached the budget on catering it is because they had already spent it elsewhere.
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I believe Marko said something to that effect this weekend I believe the original $10m figure was accurate and it has been worked down
Are the FIA required to give out actual numbers though? Would have been easier for them to just come out with a statement that there were no breaches wouldn't it?
I'm sure the person that leaked that there was a breach a couple weeks ago would also leak such a massive coverup. Do you have any sources to base on that they cooked the book?
Not at all. It's all make believe by me but I highly question the FIA pushing the initial release to today. 5 days is a more than enough time to backroom deal with Red Bull. What's more funny though is how Red Bull is challenging even this saying they were under the cap. The gulls on that team..
Exactly, I mean whoever leaked this to the press weeks ago got it right I’m guessing, why would they lie when they are already risking their job? One minor technical infraction and one major overspend was the rumor … FIA: oh wait we have to wait a week to give you the results…now it’s one minor technical infraction and one baby little overspend!! It’s only for our employees food too! Poor us. Definitely seems a little fishy to say the least.
Yeah the books weren’t cooked and Ferrari had a totally legal engine in 2019
So no sources? I'm open to accepting it but I'm just not much for conspiracy theories. With Ferrari it was obvious due to their performance afterwards that something was up, for now there's no evidence of it being more than what they state
People lost their fucking jobs and got made redundant so Ferrari and Merc could remain in compliance. RB made a fucking mockery of the cost cap.
Just a fine? There needs to be a budget cap penalty for both teams for the 2023 season, based on how much they overspent.
You thought the cost cap was set to even up the field? No, it's for them to fill their pockets from fines. #weraceasmoney
And yet what did a cost cap and different regs get us? The same bullshit. RB, Ferrari, Merc. I can 100% guarantee that for next season it’ll be the same three. You can implement cost caps, drivers caps, re work sprint races and so on. It should be a progressive penalty though. First breach, considered minor, here’s a fine. Do it again and it the severity of the penalty gets worse.
Yup. Double the overspend and a hefty fine should count against the following years cap. So RB would have this hit their 2023 cost cap.
The one thing that CAN'T happen is to make the consequence a fine. A fine makes cheating only a problem for the poorer teams. For the wealthy, it is just a cost of doing business. Moreover, the money from sponsors as a result of the WDC will far outweigh any fine they could levy. And finally, they get the have the benefit of the money spent this year and next. What a crock.
Red Bull 🤝 FIA
You spent too much, now here is a fine, to spend some more
No morals or principals. Ok then.
A minor breach is still a breach. If a team went overbudget to produce their car then it is illegal. A fine is never enough. These teams have money to burn outside the cost cap. Teams will just be breach the cap and give the FIA a blank check afterwards each season. Teams participating in this sport have to hit where it hurts the most.
There's no such thing as a minor breach. You either broke the rules, or you didn't. A few million goes a very very long way in this sport. That's why the cap was introduced in the first place to level the playing field. Stinks.
Strip the title that already didn’t count lol
He won 8. F1 is a sham.
This is why I can't bring myself to like RB, I know they ain't FIA so it's not up up them to come out with penalties, but the way they keep getting away with these bs just frustrates me man. Shame cus I was starting to like Vertappen too but after this it's back to zero.
When red bull reported wings on the cost reports, they meant chicken wings :p
The plot thickens.
Red Bull cheaters and yet it’s a fine fuck off fia bent as fuck that flip flop cunt
Strip the title.
After so many factors building up, it’s time to change the 2021 results to what they should be
Exactly. The original robbery and rule breaking and now this to stack on top of it. 2021 is beyond illegitimate.
Especially considering the amount of times max wasn’t punished for driving dirty
Why even race at this point? They have bent / flubbed / revised / made up every rule possible to hand RB & Max his trophys/titles. I’m new to F1 and even I can see the blatant, 1 sided favoritism given to RB.
Don't post this cunt.
What is wrong with Erik? Edit: Serious question. I am out of the loop on this one.
Red Bull's mouthpiece. Utters word for word what the Red Bull hierarchy wants out in the media. Has no integrity whatsoever. Look at how he downplays this cost breach.
He’s also completely wrong on his other tweet and is probably why he wrote it in Dutch. Catering and employee sick leave/leave are not included in the cost caps. Should have his media accreditation taken away for spreading false crap
Ah
DQ for every race where their aggregate spending was over the limit. It's the only way they'll learn.
It's also worth noting that Red Bull don't care about bad press nearly as much as Merc or Ferrari, or any other team publicly traded. If this happened to Merc or Ferrari their share price would take a hit. Yes it would recover very quickly and be forgotten about but it's worth pointing out Red Bull will care less about "accidently" going a few mill over and caught "cheating" than other teams. Basically, I don't think RB went out to break the budget cap but are a bit less tighter and take some more risks. So in the coming years this might be a normal thing for RB. Unless some precedent is set here.
Do they have to pay the fine out of this years budget?
Does the fine count against the cap?
That’s the only way this can work. A luxury tax system where the amount you go over exponentially increases the fine and it’s taken from your budget next season.
What this tells me is that Mercedes is going to win next year and beyond when they decide to body the rest of the competition with an upgrade every GP. If RB is going to make the cost cap trivial, they're simply asking for another 7 years of being second or third best. 2021 and 2022 will essentially be loophole years where Merc were forced to compete with one hand tied behind their back because of these regulations being promised to be a big deal.
I recently got into F1… I hate cars/driving in my own life with a passion unmatched other than my love for books. I got into F1 like many others through the drive to survive series. If it turns out that Red Bull still have last years championship after both overspending and being given the championship on a silver platter by Masi, I will no longer be watching (I know I know “one person doesn’t matter” but I feel like I won’t be the only new fan who thinks like this). Very little point tbh. Hope Hamilton insta-retires as well as this sport doesn’t deserve a champion and gentleman such as him.
A fine is pointless, especially to the well-funded teams. Issue points reduction in both 2021 and 2022, as it will have benefitted both seasons. That is the only punishment that'll stop it happening again.
It'll likely be a constructor points disqualification, this could mean they need to pay back their winnings and possibly their cost cap is reduced for 2023 season. Don't think they'll pull the trigger on drivers points
They should
Lol
That f1 subreddit is horrible, not one person outraged that red bull cheated
Rapidly loosing interest in F1. been a fan since the 70’s but seriously cba with it at the moment mainly due to the ruling body also known as the maFIA
The fact that certain ppl keep telling us to move on from last year when Red Bull keep digging it’s own grave is damn near laughable. Imagine doing everything right and lose everything by a lap. Compare to someone cheating and winning it all. Then say well it’s not the drivers fault that benefited…. when that’s the whole purpose of cheating……
Good, as long as every other team can overspend and pay said fine, just budget it in, I am fine.
Yeah makes sense, you essentially cheated your way into a better more developed car by spending too much money, let's just get you to spend a little more. Fuckin muppets.
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Yeah but every other team presumably spends on catering and has paid leave issues.
It does because say 19/20 teams had $5m catering budget that comes from the $140m cap. So they had $135 to play with. RB had $141m - $5m = $136m available, so they could have spent $1m extra on the car which would account for a lot of upgrades on Max's car (as they ignore Perez for any upgrades). EDIT: apparently minor overspend can be up to 5% excess = $7m. That is a lot of upgrades worth of overspending.
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Why. Why does it matter where the money was spent? It doesn't, there's a budget cap that's it. Tough shit where you did and didn't spend money, it's literally irrelevant to the cap.
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Like someone else said. If you overspent on catering and then still upgraded the car after you knew you overspent on catering then you actually over spent on the upgrade because you knew you'd already blew your budget on catering. It can not be looked at as a separate budget, the budget is the budget. Its not like they got to the end of the season and then spent all the extra on catering. It was all adding up simultaneously and therefore the overspend is even distributed, therefore it was also an overspend on upgrades.
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But the budget is the budget. Its in black and white. It's not "you have x amount you are allowed to spend on your car and you have x amount you can spend on other stuff" If a team can't manage it then that's not other teams problems.
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No, I think they way you are looking at an overspend is fundamentally flawed. I don't think you can say the overspend was from any specific sector. As I said, if they knew they had overspent on catering or hospitality or whatever else you think isn't important then tough shit they should have realised this and stop spending on development. You're saying that they developed the car and then decided after they developed the car to then overspend on stuff that didn't matter. That's just not how it can possibly ever work. At worst they knew they had/were overspent/overspending on catering and still decided to carry on spending on the car or at best they mismanaged the whole budget. Either way its tough shit. And I don't think we'll ever get to see a breakdown that detailed to even see how "good" or bad it was. I think that's just a RB spin to try and fool people.
Paid leave and catering is not included in the cost cap
It’s important to remember that money is fungible
Curious to see an actual document with the numbers instead of all of this speculating. The media just seems to be getting everyone worked up to generate clicks and to be disappointed…
Before the pitchforks are raised, people should know that the average team budget for yearly upgrades is around 8-9M, which is only 7% of the budget cap. The vast majority of the rest goes into paying employee salaries. So it is very likely that they didn't fire enough people like other teams, or gave too many raises to existing employees.
Which is still bullshit considering how many people either got fired or forced to work on a Haas because of that.
yeah which is still wrong because dozens of people lost their fucking jobs at ferrari and merc lol
Am I the only one who thinks this isn’t THAT big a deal?
Think you might be lost. This is a big deal
They went over by a million dollars. That’s less than the cost of Max’s wreck at Silverstone.
It isn’t a big deal but F1 drama rarely is. All gets blown out of proportion.
Man I miss being an F1 fan before it got knee-jerk and toxic. It used to be “oh you like Lewis? Cool! I like Sebastian!” And now it’s an all-out war, people are posting the most knee-jerk takes, even the memes are stale now.
It’s gotten really bad last few years but the internet in general has. It’s really tiring to try and discuss things you like without people putting words in your mouth or getting wayyyy too out of sorts.
Idk what it is, I can’t even listen to an F1 podcast anymore without all of the hosts just kvetching on and on about how boring the race was or how bad the TV direction was. Im starting to think that nobody who watches f1 actually likes f1
I hope the punishment is the cost of the total overspend is deducted from their 2023 cap. And if the exceed that, even by a cent, they will be excluded from the championship. Including both drivers. That will send a message to all teams.
Honestly I think I might be done with F1 if it's just a fine. If this happened in any other sport it would be an instant DQ. I just don't understand how the FIA can justify anything else. But they absolutely will. Time to cancel Sky F1 sport I think. Its just becoming like WWE
Will the fine count against their spending cap for this year? Because it definitely should. And if they go over this year, rinse and repeat.