F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

....lol

Was reading articles on the cost cap and sick leave was one of a handful of specific exclusions called out. Maybe there is unverified sick leave or maybe there’s some misinformation floating about.

Nothing to do with the cost cap but it’s reported that Stroll gets $10m per year base salary, same as Sainz and Bottas and more than the likes of Russell, Perez, Ocon & more. Different level nepotism.

Which title would that be, the one they didn't win last year or the one they have not won yet this year.

Never happening. I think for titles to be taken away they would have to be caught out and out cheating - as in, having significant overspend and attempting to hide it - whereas this seems more like a difference of opinion of what comes under the cap or not.

Also, we really don’t know how serious the breach actually is, as in, how much was the overspend and in what area. I’m not sure if we’ll ever know for sure, I doubt this is something that will ever be publicly released?

My guess would be, at worst, it’s a case of RB chancing their arm that a minor overspend would be dealt with fairly leniently in its first year(and maybe naively assuming Mercedes/Ferrari would do it to an extent). If they lose the appeal they probably won’t take it any further and blame their auditors, and maybe get a reduced budget for 2023/24.

There is also no malice at all from Red Bull. The FIA have even said this.

They submitted the accounts openly to the FIA...so if this is "cheating", they are rubbish at it. Along with the fact accounting is like a fine art as well, I was a sole prop for 5 years, my accountant would get me to move some savings around and expenses etc and get my tax bill way way lower, and that was just for me. Imagine what corporate accounting is like.

If anything, this is Red Bull doing what they do, and seeking an advantage within the rules just like they do with their cars.

The FIA said it isn't over 5%. But 5% of 145m is 7.25m. So it could be a decent overspend without hitting 5%.

I don't know what to think. They said the overspend is around catering and sick pay. But if they overspent then it doesn't really matter where the accounting is wrong. It means they had extra money to spend on the whole operation, including the car.

I'm not an accountant but I work with financial auditors and I know enough to say that accounting and auditing isn't black and white, a lot of it is based on interpretation and judgement. So I'll just wait and see how it shakes out.

This is F1 anyway. They don't have to slavishly apply the rules. They'll find a level of punishment that doesn't piss off Red Bull by being too harsh, doesn't piss off the other teams by being too lenient, but also doesn't encourage other teams to make the same accounting "mistake". That's the real trick.

Erm, Perez is top, not Verstappen.

I probably shouldn't have picked 5% with it being the cutoff for moving from minor to significant breech of the cap.

It is a tightrope for the FIA trying to find something that some way placates all teams. The big thing they need to do is make the punishment enough that it is a deterrent for others to break the cap because this punishment will set the precedent for any future breeches.

I think Martin Brundle summed it up well over the weekend that all teams were doing some level of hiding money and there's probably a lot of different interpretations of the rules.

Maybe Horner should've suggested they split the bill

Vettel still has glimpses of greatness in a crap car but I think it’s difficult to take a relatively small sample of wet races as an indicator of driver performance. It kind of reminds me of Kimi’s third last season or something akin to it. Would get a few good results, more than the car deserved but spent a lot of races going through the motions and errors thrown in here and there.

Good performance in Japan but you must factor in things like the shortened race, the spin leaving him with no risk of losing track position by going straight to inters, Alonso maybe pitting too late and and staying in touch with Hamilton because he couldn’t pass Ocon. Singapore again there are mitigating factors but he kept it on track and earned the points. It’s great to see him get some good results but it feels like the right time to go at the same time.

Again though, looking at a small sample size doesn’t prove a point. The Nyck De Vries race was a very specific race which suited Williams moreso. Like we’re at a point now where Stroll has been beating both drivers of the Haas, Alfas & Williams frequently in the second half of the year. He’s not the worst driver but there’s definitely 2/3 drivers at least at his level in those three teams. There’s been plenty races where they’ve been at least competitive if not better than Williams, AT, Haas & AR. I don’t think the results show at all that Aston have the slowest car on the grid in terms of overall race package so it doesn’t make sense to embellish his performance on the back of the De Vries’ race. The bottom half of the grid is probably even enough and has some poor drivers for a talented, experienced driver like Vettel to make inroads when you look at the season as a whole.

As for Danny Ric, Bottas is also beating him and he hasn’t gotten much from the car in the second half of the year.

It’s difficult to measure driver performance in unequal cars. Feel like beyond the teammate, you’re basically being subjective until you get to outliers like the Ricciardo case. Like you’re saying that he’s clearly outperformed everyone bar Verstappen, LeClerc and maybe Norris. I wouldn’t be filled with confidence that you could stick him in for Perez/Sainz/Russell/Hamilton and the respective teams points would be better.

Where did this catering rumour come from? It sounds like a Red bull made up story to deflect from the bad press of going over budget.

that was the link... i meant to post it in the previous post...

I would have thought Ralf would be well known enough to be identified as David's father rather than Michael as his uncle.

Right, a lovely feel good story for your Friday morning.