F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

Overspent was 1.8m, which would have been 400k if a tax issue was applied correctly. That's what I'm seeing in the reports.

They had a dummy run in 2020 so no excuses for that kind of overspend.

I'd say the rest of this weekend will be full of digs thrown at each other now.

Fia also acknowledged that RB didn't try to mislead the FIA.

I think a lot of the discussion will be around just how lenient the punishment is. Leaving aside the talk of stripping titles, because that was never an option, they have come away from this with nothing more than a stern talking too and a reduction in wind tunnel/CFD time that will have no effect.

What this message send out is that teams can overspend up to the 5% mark with no real punishment.

The FIA will also have to change their process in order to stop other teams overspending like this. It is the first year of the cap, so it was bound to have problems. The main take away is that this wasn't cheating at all.

Cheating such a subjective term and almost always impossible to prove. You can never know the intent behind an action, unless you're a mind reader or they are dumb enough to fully document it.

The biggest issue the FIA have now is precedent. Any future breaches less than 5% that recieve harsher penalties is just going to end up in the courts unless they can prove the team was being dishonest/cheating on purpose.

Ah shur, like anything in F1, it's a compromise. It's not simply a sport where the rules are applied whatever the consequences. It's a business and entertainment 'circus' also.

The bigger teams will always have more influence over making rules and how rules are applied. Red bull is a big team with a long history as sponsor and team owner. F1 was never going to genuinely harm them with the punishment. So they allowed RB to negotiate their own punishment to avoid upsetting one of their main stakeholders. God help them if they ever have to punish Ferrari. They'll probably do ot in secret as they did with the dodgy engine a few years ago.

If the FIA manage to stop costs spiraling and the smaller teams can catch up to an extent, then they'll be happy. There's little they can do about their main teams breaking the rules. All they have to do is threaten to walk away and the FIA is bunched. This whole thing is pretty shady and I doubt we'll ever know the actually details. No point pretending we do.

Cheating in this context is pretty clear though. RB were upfront with the FIA and had discussions with them about the whole thing, there was no misleading by RB to try and hide costs etc, add in the amount they were over by and if this is "cheating", it is not done very well at all.

The intent here is the misinterpretation of costs and tax credits etc. It is a mistake, there is no malice behind it at all, even the FIA said this.

Sky coverage will be unbearable this weekend with them banging on about this

I think you've taken me up wrong here. I wasn't implying that RB cheated, far from it. Just trying to highlight how difficult a charge of cheating would be to apply, especially in a sport with so many interpretations and clarifications.

There's no indication they tried to hide anything from the FIA, they did try to stretch some of the interpretations a bit to far though. They seem to have been on the level with the FIA. Honer should have kept quiet on the entire issue though, he's come out of this with more than a little egg on his face after his very strong words a couple of weeks back.

How is the use of tax credits fair in this im sure all the uk based teams used them but what about Ferrari/alpha tauri (Italy) and Sauber/alfa (switzerland I think) and Haas (but they have a UK headquarters) they arent uk based would they get the same treatment same level of tax credits/amount refunded?

It should be spending before tax credits so that means red bull were at least 5+ million over the what about the rest of the teams are they all over too? most likely!

Looking at it like that 5Mill + over on catering and social security makes this look even more dodgy they just couldnt pair it down by 400K.

Apparently the FIA got them down from 1.8mill to 400k using a tax credit they missed.

Sorry but you set a cost cap it should be that and that only, no tax credits or anything to help you skirt rules or cheat the system you are given a budget of £135mil you should be made stick to it all things final no ifs, ands or buts. You dont you lose points or get DQ'd from one or both championships or have the fine taken from your next years budget. Not this Paltry slap on the wrist the Red bull got.

This is Fernando is faster than you territory all over again something that they claim is enforcable but clearly isnt and has already been made a mockery of most likely by all teams red bull just got caught out and by accepting the ABA they are not denying despite Horner insisting they were well below.

Toto as well, he had said that a team was "massively" over the budget. That isn't the case either.

In fairness to Toto, 1.8 million is a massive amount of money. The big difference is that he's not the one currently in breach of the rules so I'll cut him a little slack on this one.

The annoying elements here are that red bull said (on f1 show earlier) that they didn't do the trial run last year. So any honest mistakes that could have been ironed out didn't get a chance.

And realistically, if you polled everyone last year and asked which team was most likely to breach the cost cap, I'd wager nearly everyone would have said red bull.

I did see a great suggestion that a better punishment is ballast to the car. The greater the overspend the heavier the ballast. Weight has such an impact it would cause major issues, would bring teams into line.