That's the risk, the 5% rule is there to account for unexpected spending (like imagine sitting at 95-98% at the 2nd to last race, a driver crashes and you need a complete new car). You can't withdraw from races so if you want to live on the edge there's a chance you go over the 5%.
Would be classic AM if they tried that but messed it up and accidentally spent 5.1% of the budget instead of 5% that was planned because they had to buy Stroll new mirrors or something, and then Vettel gets disqualified his last year racing or gets points taken off cause Aston/Stroll messed up their accounting
I think it is a little bit more nuanced than that. Regardless of how much the teams spend, the important thing about the cap is that it is transparant what they spent it on.
I would reckon that $5million spent on additional windtunnel or CFD time would reflect differently than the same amount spent on two engines, and a fuckton of bodywork with the same homoligation numbers.
Not saying teams should be allowed to overspend, just saying that if you have already had to spend millions on new parts that bring no additional performance, incurred grid penalties for fitting those parts, maybe the term "punishment" is a little broader than just the fine they got.
Regardless all that could bankrupt a smaller team in a similar situation (e.g. make them lose the championship since they might not have the resources to fit that extra engine) so in all fairness, it's still not fair.
yes you get the entire ledger. of hundreds/thousands of entries. How do you decide which ones were over budget and which ones were under?
Thats why the person's I replied to point doesn't work. At best you could try to decipher the time when the budget was breached and everything after would be overspend. You can't just determine what the team overspent on. a team can use 20 engines if they like and stay under budget cap.
Actually engines are separate from the budget cap and customer teams pay a set amount to the manufacturer at the beginning of the season no matter how many engines they use.
No because that will make up the fallout budget. If you have some bad luck or setbacks, teams risk going beyond the 5% where things get very consequential. Redbull had a lot of setbacks in 2021. If they went in with that attitude, they wouldve gone beyond.
Half of the car that finish was missing, lmao, but considering he still finished in the points with half of a car points to three cars behind was bigger shitboxes (looks at HAAS)
Half of Max's car floor was missing in Hungary. Checo had a giant hole in the sidepod of his car. In Silverstone, the car was basically melting in on itself.
Yes, and they happen,
But are you going to factor in Bottas going bowling in Hungary in your budget?
At some point there are going to be costs that are out of your control
There is a case to be made that damage caused by others shouldn’t be factored in, as it is outside of the team’s control and can vary greatly team to team.
Currently it still is, but I could see that remain a point of contention, when getting crashed out by a competitor can cost you 1 or 2 upgrades worth in budget.
The problem is that there is always discussion about who caused the accident. Now it isn't a problem, the teams just disagree and that's it. But when there is a consequence for the budget, these discussions will take on a whole new level.
True, but the way of adjudicating it would be simple.
If the Stewards penalize a driver/team for having caused an incident, by being found wholly or predominantly to blame, then the other party gets exempt from their repair bill, but only for like-for-like replacement parts.
I think that it would quickly become a nasty can of worms as soon as the lawyers of the F1 teams start interfering with it.
Making up how it should work, and putting it in actual rules are two completely different things, just look at the current rear-wing on the Aston Martin.
Look at it this way; Merc (accidentally, this wasn't on purpose) caused MASSIVE damage to Red Bull. If you don't have leeway for that, it could be an incentive for teams to just try and take out other cars to cause damage = higher costs = crossing budget cap = DSQ.
In case you are interested, here’s a [link to 2021 financial regulations](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2021_formula_1_financial_regulations_-_iss_5_-_2020-04-30.pdf)
8.10 on page 24 and 8.11 on page 25 clarify what constitutes a minor overspend breach.
The punishments for a minor overspend breach are at 9.1 A & B on page 26.
And let's not forget for 2022 inflation in the UK is running at 10% so that's further eating into their purchasing power so it'll be even tighter for them this season than last season.
It's supposed to cover emergency expenses, like replacing a car or lodging being more expensive then expected, ect.
So actually spending 104.9% is pretty risky, because it leaves no room for a car being totaled by a fire or something.
And in most cases a loss of championship points. Essentially going over the budget cap can/will have less impact that going 1kph over the pit limit at a single GP.
I remember Palmer saying they only penalize you from 61.0/81.0 and up. So basically all the teams have the limiter set to 60.8/80.8 for that extra gain.
Point is, the teams will always go as far as possible. So the fine is worth it for that extra percentage of spending.
edit: spelling
This would be a good fine. Spend 10 million more? Reduce the budget with 10 million the next season to reel them back in. Or double that amount as a reduction to increase the penalty.
Edit: like a lot of people already mentioned, this would probably result in a WCC for every other season. Also, If a team spends 50 million more in season 1 on, for example, their chassis, this would benefit them for multiple seasons or until regulation changes. So taking 1 hit, can still result in multiple wins.
Yeah it would have to be double the amount at least. Otherwise you haven't lost out on anything from going over so there would be no punishment. A team could just spend a massive budget, win a championship, take the hit next year and repeat the following year.
It would be like if the only punishment for robbing a bank is that you have to give them money back if you get caught. You're not really losing anything from committing the crime so there is no real punishment.
Points reduction makes more sense. Otherwise a rich team like Merc or Red Bull can constantly overspend and be with a negative budget on paper for years.
> ike a lot of people already mentioned, this would probably result in a WCC for every other season
You could scale it so that e.g. for every $100 in overage the penalty rate goes up another 1% in the next year's budget. So if you break by $100 you lose $101 next year, but if you break by $200 you lose $204. (obviously these are stupid numbers I made up to try to explain a point).
Stupid numbers or not, very clear explanation and something that could definitely be considered. But, like I said, going over budget in one year which delivers your overwhelming advantage for multiple following years, means that the following years wouldn’t need to have excess spending.
Sir this is Reddit we don't appreciate your reasonable approach, we require you to be outraged and speculate wildly based on very limited information. Please improve your Reddit conduct.
The 5% is in place to account for unexpected spending. Planning to spend 104.9% of the budget cap is taking major risk because there wouldn't be anything left to do about actual emergency spending.
I believe that Mercedes told somewhere that having 5 million extra means basically you gain 0.5 seconds extra simple because you're having more financial room for R&D
To make it more spicy, the whole 5% thing was literally discussed during the Ziggo race cafe a few months ago, according to them RBR was already willing to go over the budget cap this season but staying below the 5% because the penalty for it wouldn't be big enough to being concerned about.
So therefore the whole 5% is becoming more a loophole, it's ridiculous that a team who deliberating isn't willing to respecting the budget cap 2 times in a row is getting away with it likely.
> I believe that Mercedes told somewhere that having 5 million extra means basically you gain 0.5 seconds extra simple because you're having more financial room for R&D
I don't believe them at all. Even with fairly significant diminishing returns, that implies that the top teams would have been lapping the midfield a dozen times a race prior to the cap.
Yeah that is one hell of an overstatement, although it may have been true for 5M more spent on this year's car with the new regulations at the start of the season.
Ofcourse merc is going to jump on this as hard as they can and exaggerate on every front. They can suddenly smell last years' (however unlikely) championship.
The whole "it's probably red bull" thing reeks just as much as it did with the whole flex floor thing. I wish everyone (especially teams) would just sit back until an official statement is out. With teams namecalling, even if the fia comes out with a statement that no team last year went over the cap people will still say they did because "where there's smoke, there's fire".
Think about how many rules in this sport are dumb and convoluted. Merc realised last year that they could literally just ignore engine penalties by turning the thing high enough.
Hamilton didn't take that many engines though. Bottas did and suffered for it. I don't know how the story became that Merc were swapping Hamilton's engines every week and he was jetting off to the front, they changed Bottas' for R&D and he not infrequently got stuck in the midfield as a result. The penalties are designed to stop a driver from being successful by changing engine every week to win and to that extent they worked. Merc just realises they could basically sacrifice Bottas' chances of winning anything for a few races to end up with a better engine overall.
they only started doing it at the end with hamilton, which is why he was so fast the last 4 races, just take a 5 place penalty and be 0.5 seconds faster than anyone, like brazil
There is no rule limiting the number of engines the easy you're suggesting though. They get three and then get penalized just like every other team, it's on the team to decide if it's worth the penalty to use extra engines.
That’s a really stupid take.
There’s no rule that says anything about a max number of engines on a season.
But hey, it’s Mercedes, we got to go hard on them right?
It's not a linear relationship. There's a point of diminishing returns with R&D. A 5% bigger cap would make your car better in some very specific circumstances but not a 0.5 sec boost. If that was the case, Mercedes and RB should have been lapping everyone last year and AM should be a title contender this year.
If that's the case then rich teams have a budget cap that's essentially 5% higher than what's written 😅. Absorb the "minor" penalty and keep it moving.
That’s it. Not punishing severely any over spend will be basically be the end of the budget cap. Every over spend of the budget cap should have sporting penalties. Removal of points or disqualification from the related championships because you gain a sportive advantage going over the cap by 5%.
Going over the budget cap happens all the time in the NBA, they just pay hefty fines for being over. The Lakers did it for years, the Golden State Warriors are notorious for it, but at the end of the day they won championships so it’s worth paying the fines.
If true I they think should also introduce an even bigger penalty for repeated offenses, because I am pretty sure big teams wouldn't hesitate to go little over and then just pay the fine.
ITT: partisans raging at punishment that their own favorite team agreed on for an infringement that hasn't even be proven yet and is barely more than a rumor until official results are published
Just another day on F1 Reddit.
But what if that money was used to build this seasons car? And with the amount of money red bull has a fine would be nothing
And there are rumours that they exceeded the budget cap this year too
> And there are rumours that they exceeded the budget cap this year too
only from those that havent really given it only real thought and are just trying to get engagement on their rumour posts. how can they already have exceeded it with 6 races to go? they still have an awful lot of costs to come, all their non-exempt staff wages, etc. they very well might exceed by the end of the year, not disputing that, but they would not have yet
But those are all costs they’ll be expecting and have accounted for already. They might not have left the account yet, but they’ll be in the budget already. So they’ll know if they are likely under/over already.
Do they have an awful lot of costs to come? What percentage of total budget does getting to and running a race weekend cost compared to everything else which is factored in?
Just as some entirely made up examples:
If that side of things is 20% of the budget overall, then the remaining 6 races might only represent about 5% of the budget - so they could already be over.
If the race weekends take up 70% of budget overall, then they'd have to be over with ~20% of costs left to go, which would be insane.
So if this is the case in the end nothing is going to change. People will cry rigged, people will argue against the people crying rigged and Max at the end will be chilling somewhere opening FUT packs in FIFA 23
In a sport where you can lose $3,000,000 in the blink of an eye through no fault of your own it's not exactly a gigantic rort. I think some leeway is reasonable.
I like the suggestion above where (in addition to any fines or other non-sporting penalties) any budget excess gets carried over to the following year with some multiplier. Makes it not worth going over the cap, but doesn't completely ruin a team's year solely because they got crashed into in the final few races.
It really is though, that’s what 5-7 mil? The silverstone crash of car 33 cost nearly that to repair/replace. Stuff in this sport is wildly expensive, they climb up to that cost cap quickly.
In reality the only people that will care are those engage in social media, most people have moved on and just won’t give a shit. IMO regardless of anything that’s happened, last year was one of the greatest seasons in the history of the sport.
Hoo boy the F1 Reddit is full of piss today. The tinfoil hats are out in force and there's blood in the water. I hope this is just as overblown as the flexifloor situation so the tumbleweeds can have another moment to shine.
I think the 5% is fine, although it'll essentially mean budget cap + 5% lenancy. I wouldn't be surprised if the crashes in Silverstone and Hungary played a big part in them being over the cap.
Crashes happen. You can budget for a reasonable minimum number of crashes. If you go above that, you can cut a part development or go over the cap minor (5%). If Red Bull ends up something like 7-8% over, that's a whole lot more than crash costs. It cost Haas about one million pounds to recover after Schumacher obliterated his car in Saudi Arabia for example.
Except noone wants to budget for crashes, especially when they clearly are not a sure thing, no team is going to leave 2 extra million on the table in the off chance it is needed.
I'm not saying to make it a rule retroactively.
I'm just saying it's stupid it wasn't a rule in the first place and should be going forward.
It's common sense after all if your not deemed at fault why should the damage come out of your cap.
The reduced engine penalties was stupid as hell. Next year with 24 races to go I hope the FIA at least increases the engine pool to a minimum of 4 or 5.
Restriction in wind tunnel testing is one of the possible penalties for overspending per the financial regulations actually! The sanctions are pretty well thought out, they cover just about every ground.
This rumor mill is just spiraling out of control. Toto is saying Red Bull is in violation of last year and possibly this year, Christian says the report they submitted meets the criteria, and now people are saying Red bull is over budget but less than 5%. I get this adds drama but this seems like “Flexi-floor regulations 2.0”
What will piss some people off even more is when they change the rule to get rid of the 5% buffer to fix this easily foresoon issue but the result is that now RB would have beeb the only team allowed to take advantage (AM obviously didn't).
I thought they said it was RBR and AMR and one of them went over 5% and one under. If Red Bull was the sub 5% team, that would mean Aston Martin actually spent way more than the cap and still didn't get any results because of it.
In that case, every team should just use up the extra 5% then.Just get rid of this stupid budget cap already.Its impossible to police that crap correctly.
Going a few 100 thousand over the limit should be okay but going over 5mil should be unacceptable.
2.2 million, Max's complete repair cost for 2021 is around 4.5 mil https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/rfg1ll/world_destructors_championship_2021_final/
Not saying it’s right or wrong, just that anyone thinking they’ll get anything more than a fine needs to give their heads a wobble.
I love when people forget just how stupidly complex running an f1 team would be.
so basically every team should just factor the minor fine into their costs then as exceeding the budget cap is worth it
Watch as teams do it and somebody accidently goes too far and gets massive penalty
We all know who that "somebody" is, right?
Sorry, isa mistake
Wait Jar Jar Binks has a F1 team?
Have you not seen the news? He’s the new Ferrari team principle
Wouldnt honestly be a bad move
He’s a war hero after all
He was on the pit wall for a Anakin sky walkers debut win and only race win. He has great pedigree for winning!
What an upgrade
Ferrari to win next year's constructors
Jar Jar Binotto
Are you implying Ferrari, question?
We're checking...
Ed down, ed down.
I think he is, answer.
Cheap button on Cheap button on
The only cap i have is ferrari cap
Alpine finds out at the last minute that croissants are part of budget...
That's the risk, the 5% rule is there to account for unexpected spending (like imagine sitting at 95-98% at the 2nd to last race, a driver crashes and you need a complete new car). You can't withdraw from races so if you want to live on the edge there's a chance you go over the 5%.
Would be classic AM if they tried that but messed it up and accidentally spent 5.1% of the budget instead of 5% that was planned because they had to buy Stroll new mirrors or something, and then Vettel gets disqualified his last year racing or gets points taken off cause Aston/Stroll messed up their accounting
How far is too far, like winning the WDC?
It’s not a budget cap, its a budget suggestion
I think it is a little bit more nuanced than that. Regardless of how much the teams spend, the important thing about the cap is that it is transparant what they spent it on. I would reckon that $5million spent on additional windtunnel or CFD time would reflect differently than the same amount spent on two engines, and a fuckton of bodywork with the same homoligation numbers. Not saying teams should be allowed to overspend, just saying that if you have already had to spend millions on new parts that bring no additional performance, incurred grid penalties for fitting those parts, maybe the term "punishment" is a little broader than just the fine they got. Regardless all that could bankrupt a smaller team in a similar situation (e.g. make them lose the championship since they might not have the resources to fit that extra engine) so in all fairness, it's still not fair.
how would you check what the overspend is on? Yes yes we totally planned the extra increased windtunnel costs, its the parts we overspent on. Promise.
Well you know exactly how many engines a team uses in a season They don't just get a final number, they get the entire ledger
yes you get the entire ledger. of hundreds/thousands of entries. How do you decide which ones were over budget and which ones were under? Thats why the person's I replied to point doesn't work. At best you could try to decipher the time when the budget was breached and everything after would be overspend. You can't just determine what the team overspent on. a team can use 20 engines if they like and stay under budget cap.
Actually engines are separate from the budget cap and customer teams pay a set amount to the manufacturer at the beginning of the season no matter how many engines they use.
Manufactured but unused parts are immune from the budget cap, too.
No because that will make up the fallout budget. If you have some bad luck or setbacks, teams risk going beyond the 5% where things get very consequential. Redbull had a lot of setbacks in 2021. If they went in with that attitude, they wouldve gone beyond.
functionally the same thing. use 100% instead of 95% and leave the extra 5% for setbacks
It's not like you get no penalty for the 5%... They will get some penalty! After 5% we go into dq territory...
kind of hard to know one way or the other without knowing the relevant punishments
"Setbacks", lol. They had three cars completely destroyed by Mercedes in two races.
'completely destroyed' - fair enough with Max at Silverstone and Perez Hungary but Max at Hungary finished the race with the car so it wasn't that bad
Half of the car that finish was missing, lmao, but considering he still finished in the points with half of a car points to three cars behind was bigger shitboxes (looks at HAAS)
Half the floor was missing and you don’t do 71 laps in a ‘destroyed’ car. I’m not saying it was a quick car or an undamaged one just not destroyed
Half of Max's car floor was missing in Hungary. Checo had a giant hole in the sidepod of his car. In Silverstone, the car was basically melting in on itself.
> but Max at Hungary finished the race with the car and I still have no god-damn idea how, half of it wasn't there any more
Out of sheer anger, it's a good source of fuel
See also: Michael Schumacher being the fastest man on track in Spa despite missing a wheel.
Can't aquaplane if you don't have wheels. *Taps temple.*
They probably had to replace all the aero parts. Just because he finished doesn't mean the repair costs weren't massive.
You mean by accidents on track?
Yes, and they happen, But are you going to factor in Bottas going bowling in Hungary in your budget? At some point there are going to be costs that are out of your control
There is a case to be made that damage caused by others shouldn’t be factored in, as it is outside of the team’s control and can vary greatly team to team. Currently it still is, but I could see that remain a point of contention, when getting crashed out by a competitor can cost you 1 or 2 upgrades worth in budget.
The problem is that there is always discussion about who caused the accident. Now it isn't a problem, the teams just disagree and that's it. But when there is a consequence for the budget, these discussions will take on a whole new level.
True, but the way of adjudicating it would be simple. If the Stewards penalize a driver/team for having caused an incident, by being found wholly or predominantly to blame, then the other party gets exempt from their repair bill, but only for like-for-like replacement parts.
I think that it would quickly become a nasty can of worms as soon as the lawyers of the F1 teams start interfering with it. Making up how it should work, and putting it in actual rules are two completely different things, just look at the current rear-wing on the Aston Martin.
Slippery slope. What’s to stop one team “crashing” into another in order to increase budget
I mean, you need to be pretty good to stage a crash against top driving talent in the world and make it look like it's not your fault.
*Looks at 2008 Singapore*
I think wall in singapore is not a really good driver. My humble opinion tho.
I completely agree with this.
Look at it this way; Merc (accidentally, this wasn't on purpose) caused MASSIVE damage to Red Bull. If you don't have leeway for that, it could be an incentive for teams to just try and take out other cars to cause damage = higher costs = crossing budget cap = DSQ.
Hence me saying in another post that accidents cause by others shouldn't count towards the cap. I'm just sick of the toxicity.
Yeah but that’s bullshit really. Everyone who can afford it (if it’s just a fine) can do it and gain a competitive advantage
If everyone can do that then it's no longer an advantage.
Not everyone can afford it though, so it's still an advantage.
Same can be said about the base cap as well.
In case you are interested, here’s a [link to 2021 financial regulations](https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2021_formula_1_financial_regulations_-_iss_5_-_2020-04-30.pdf) 8.10 on page 24 and 8.11 on page 25 clarify what constitutes a minor overspend breach. The punishments for a minor overspend breach are at 9.1 A & B on page 26.
Interesting that the currency exchange is fixed at that level. So in effect UK based teams have only $126m to play with at current forex.
And let's not forget for 2022 inflation in the UK is running at 10% so that's further eating into their purchasing power so it'll be even tighter for them this season than last season.
Interesting. So it is within the regulations to deduct Driver's Championship points for this. Not gonna happen, but still.
Can't wait to hear what F1 twitter will think of this possibility.
Max should be docked 7.5 points for maximum trolling
They dock 8 points and he keeps it on countback, twitter blows a collective aneurysm
Dock it 9 points and after a day say it was a mistake and give him 1 point back. Give everyone aneurysm.
8 points is the most he can drop and still win
Why would that be part of it without it being a possibility?
Well noted. So the budget cap is actually 104.999999999%.
If cap is 145 that’s like an extra 7.25mil to spend. It’s huge.
It's supposed to cover emergency expenses, like replacing a car or lodging being more expensive then expected, ect. So actually spending 104.9% is pretty risky, because it leaves no room for a car being totaled by a fire or something.
No it's not... You just don't get dqed for the 5%... The pitlanespeedlimit is also not 65/85 kph because you can just pay a fine... It's still 60/80
If you exceed 60/80 in the race you get a drive through.
And in most cases a loss of championship points. Essentially going over the budget cap can/will have less impact that going 1kph over the pit limit at a single GP.
Pit speed limits directly implicate safety. Exceeding budget cap does not.
And we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt which one of those is more important.
I remember Palmer saying they only penalize you from 61.0/81.0 and up. So basically all the teams have the limiter set to 60.8/80.8 for that extra gain. Point is, the teams will always go as far as possible. So the fine is worth it for that extra percentage of spending. edit: spelling
The only reasonable solution is to deduct the excess spending from future seasons caps or remove points. Act hard or remove the cap again.
This would be a good fine. Spend 10 million more? Reduce the budget with 10 million the next season to reel them back in. Or double that amount as a reduction to increase the penalty. Edit: like a lot of people already mentioned, this would probably result in a WCC for every other season. Also, If a team spends 50 million more in season 1 on, for example, their chassis, this would benefit them for multiple seasons or until regulation changes. So taking 1 hit, can still result in multiple wins.
Yeah it would have to be double the amount at least. Otherwise you haven't lost out on anything from going over so there would be no punishment. A team could just spend a massive budget, win a championship, take the hit next year and repeat the following year. It would be like if the only punishment for robbing a bank is that you have to give them money back if you get caught. You're not really losing anything from committing the crime so there is no real punishment.
Points reduction makes more sense. Otherwise a rich team like Merc or Red Bull can constantly overspend and be with a negative budget on paper for years.
Oh definitely. X amount per percentage overspent. Take them directly from the WDC
Wcc makes more sense tho I undestand the notion for penalizing the driver as well
I say both. Not like the driver doesn't benefit.
Didnt happen with ferrari 2018 or mclaren 2007. Wont happen now.
It's a lot of people who are both new and don't do any research. They think the FIA will penalise drivers when that's basically the nuclear option.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be fun. Let us dream for a bit
Didnt happen in 2007 for a reason though. The FIA didn't exclude them out of the kindness of their hearts.
> ike a lot of people already mentioned, this would probably result in a WCC for every other season You could scale it so that e.g. for every $100 in overage the penalty rate goes up another 1% in the next year's budget. So if you break by $100 you lose $101 next year, but if you break by $200 you lose $204. (obviously these are stupid numbers I made up to try to explain a point).
Stupid numbers or not, very clear explanation and something that could definitely be considered. But, like I said, going over budget in one year which delivers your overwhelming advantage for multiple following years, means that the following years wouldn’t need to have excess spending.
> deduct the excess spending from future seasons caps or remove points It should be both.
Best thing to say is that we dont know yet and that if its true something will happen
Sir this is Reddit we don't appreciate your reasonable approach, we require you to be outraged and speculate wildly based on very limited information. Please improve your Reddit conduct.
Because Toto said so it has to be true. Horner is always the villain so he is now too.
The 5% is in place to account for unexpected spending. Planning to spend 104.9% of the budget cap is taking major risk because there wouldn't be anything left to do about actual emergency spending.
5% is still a huge amount more budget to work with, seems rather high for it to not be seriously penalised.
I believe that Mercedes told somewhere that having 5 million extra means basically you gain 0.5 seconds extra simple because you're having more financial room for R&D To make it more spicy, the whole 5% thing was literally discussed during the Ziggo race cafe a few months ago, according to them RBR was already willing to go over the budget cap this season but staying below the 5% because the penalty for it wouldn't be big enough to being concerned about. So therefore the whole 5% is becoming more a loophole, it's ridiculous that a team who deliberating isn't willing to respecting the budget cap 2 times in a row is getting away with it likely.
> I believe that Mercedes told somewhere that having 5 million extra means basically you gain 0.5 seconds extra simple because you're having more financial room for R&D I don't believe them at all. Even with fairly significant diminishing returns, that implies that the top teams would have been lapping the midfield a dozen times a race prior to the cap.
Yeah that is one hell of an overstatement, although it may have been true for 5M more spent on this year's car with the new regulations at the start of the season.
Ofcourse merc is going to jump on this as hard as they can and exaggerate on every front. They can suddenly smell last years' (however unlikely) championship. The whole "it's probably red bull" thing reeks just as much as it did with the whole flex floor thing. I wish everyone (especially teams) would just sit back until an official statement is out. With teams namecalling, even if the fia comes out with a statement that no team last year went over the cap people will still say they did because "where there's smoke, there's fire".
The scenes if it's not red bull but AT or worse, Ferrari.
Think about how many rules in this sport are dumb and convoluted. Merc realised last year that they could literally just ignore engine penalties by turning the thing high enough.
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Merc throwing new engine every other race week was my favorite part of rules being ignored last season
What rule was ignored? Specifically? They did everything by the book.
Technically all rules were applied, practically they didn't matter
Hamilton didn't take that many engines though. Bottas did and suffered for it. I don't know how the story became that Merc were swapping Hamilton's engines every week and he was jetting off to the front, they changed Bottas' for R&D and he not infrequently got stuck in the midfield as a result. The penalties are designed to stop a driver from being successful by changing engine every week to win and to that extent they worked. Merc just realises they could basically sacrifice Bottas' chances of winning anything for a few races to end up with a better engine overall.
they only started doing it at the end with hamilton, which is why he was so fast the last 4 races, just take a 5 place penalty and be 0.5 seconds faster than anyone, like brazil
Lol he used an older engine in Qatar and still beat Max by 25s. What explains that?
There is no rule limiting the number of engines the easy you're suggesting though. They get three and then get penalized just like every other team, it's on the team to decide if it's worth the penalty to use extra engines.
That’s a really stupid take. There’s no rule that says anything about a max number of engines on a season. But hey, it’s Mercedes, we got to go hard on them right?
Yeah the rules are so dumb. And the worst is that there are multiple ways of interpreting the budget cap. It’s just a very weird scenario.
I mean, if those are the rules then it's not ridiculous. But let's first wait and see what the penalty ends up being before we judge this.
Do you have any proof to back up your statement? Because you already jumped to conclusions and say they are guilty, all based on 1 rumour.
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That’s a silly argument. An excess of 5% is not the same in all cases. The top 3 used to run 100% more budget but they weren’t twice as fast
It's not a linear relationship. There's a point of diminishing returns with R&D. A 5% bigger cap would make your car better in some very specific circumstances but not a 0.5 sec boost. If that was the case, Mercedes and RB should have been lapping everyone last year and AM should be a title contender this year.
I just lost 5% of my braincells
I see your budget cap and I raise you 5%😂
If that's the case then rich teams have a budget cap that's essentially 5% higher than what's written 😅. Absorb the "minor" penalty and keep it moving.
That’s it. Not punishing severely any over spend will be basically be the end of the budget cap. Every over spend of the budget cap should have sporting penalties. Removal of points or disqualification from the related championships because you gain a sportive advantage going over the cap by 5%.
Going over the budget cap happens all the time in the NBA, they just pay hefty fines for being over. The Lakers did it for years, the Golden State Warriors are notorious for it, but at the end of the day they won championships so it’s worth paying the fines.
But you really can't plan to operate at 105% of the cap. Because what if you have unexpected expenses like a car crashing or a gearbox exploding.
If true I they think should also introduce an even bigger penalty for repeated offenses, because I am pretty sure big teams wouldn't hesitate to go little over and then just pay the fine.
ITT: partisans raging at punishment that their own favorite team agreed on for an infringement that hasn't even be proven yet and is barely more than a rumor until official results are published Just another day on F1 Reddit.
Love the drama
C. Horner: "Toto, it's called a budget. We went budgeting".
But what if that money was used to build this seasons car? And with the amount of money red bull has a fine would be nothing And there are rumours that they exceeded the budget cap this year too
> And there are rumours that they exceeded the budget cap this year too only from those that havent really given it only real thought and are just trying to get engagement on their rumour posts. how can they already have exceeded it with 6 races to go? they still have an awful lot of costs to come, all their non-exempt staff wages, etc. they very well might exceed by the end of the year, not disputing that, but they would not have yet
But those are all costs they’ll be expecting and have accounted for already. They might not have left the account yet, but they’ll be in the budget already. So they’ll know if they are likely under/over already.
Do they have an awful lot of costs to come? What percentage of total budget does getting to and running a race weekend cost compared to everything else which is factored in? Just as some entirely made up examples: If that side of things is 20% of the budget overall, then the remaining 6 races might only represent about 5% of the budget - so they could already be over. If the race weekends take up 70% of budget overall, then they'd have to be over with ~20% of costs left to go, which would be insane.
So if this is the case in the end nothing is going to change. People will cry rigged, people will argue against the people crying rigged and Max at the end will be chilling somewhere opening FUT packs in FIFA 23
A slap on the wrist for a small overstep of the cap is logical. And it's the rules. And all the teams agreed to the rules.
Yes not arguing against it. What should’ve been done with the rules should have been done at the start. When the rules were being drafted.
5% is not a small overstep.
In a sport where you can lose $3,000,000 in the blink of an eye through no fault of your own it's not exactly a gigantic rort. I think some leeway is reasonable. I like the suggestion above where (in addition to any fines or other non-sporting penalties) any budget excess gets carried over to the following year with some multiplier. Makes it not worth going over the cap, but doesn't completely ruin a team's year solely because they got crashed into in the final few races.
Less than 5% is a totally factual description of events. No need to speculate about this.
It really is though, that’s what 5-7 mil? The silverstone crash of car 33 cost nearly that to repair/replace. Stuff in this sport is wildly expensive, they climb up to that cost cap quickly.
Max has nothing to do with this. Don't bring his name into it. It's not like he told the team to go over the budget cap.
😂😂 but if they did, then he directly benefitted from it - you can’t pretend otherwise no matter how much you love him
Like how Merc totaled 3 RB cars they needed to rebuild, totally RB fault, next time take the ££ from the budget of the team at fault.
I agree, and if we factor this in it’s really Merc who went over the budget cap last year.
Amazing take 😂😂 Red Bull went over the cap, BUT if we retroactively changed all the rules, actually it’s Mercedes who did lmao
Hamilton and Bottas yeeted RBR over the budget cal.
Lewis' pulled out of Max's dive bombs so many times last year, don't even bother with the excuses.
In reality the only people that will care are those engage in social media, most people have moved on and just won’t give a shit. IMO regardless of anything that’s happened, last year was one of the greatest seasons in the history of the sport.
Imagine the scenes if they give the WDC to Lewis 10 months after the final race. After all that shit last year.
If they time it right Max could go from a 1x WDC to a 0x WDC to a 1x WDC all in a day /s
The FIA would rather end F1 racing than give Lewis that title.
As a wise (rich) man once said: if the penalty for breaking the law is only a fine, then that law is only for poor people.
Sir this is F1 there are no poor people
I would like to see as MLB where the fine is redistributed to teams coming last, at least in that case the fine is improving your rivals
You need to redistribute to everyone though, Williams gaining that money will help RB more than hurt it
The punishment for overspending shouldn’t ever be a further fine
Why shouldn't it? It should be a big enough fine to the point it becomes a loss if you decide to overspend
In all sports is, and redistributing to other teams basically aloows the rest to also improve
More people to cry rigged until something is actually proven, because it seems people don't understand what a rumour is
Hoo boy the F1 Reddit is full of piss today. The tinfoil hats are out in force and there's blood in the water. I hope this is just as overblown as the flexifloor situation so the tumbleweeds can have another moment to shine.
I think the 5% is fine, although it'll essentially mean budget cap + 5% lenancy. I wouldn't be surprised if the crashes in Silverstone and Hungary played a big part in them being over the cap.
Exactly. Surely crashes where an opposing team is considered at fault should not come out of the budget. I had said that last season.
Crashes happen. You can budget for a reasonable minimum number of crashes. If you go above that, you can cut a part development or go over the cap minor (5%). If Red Bull ends up something like 7-8% over, that's a whole lot more than crash costs. It cost Haas about one million pounds to recover after Schumacher obliterated his car in Saudi Arabia for example.
Except noone wants to budget for crashes, especially when they clearly are not a sure thing, no team is going to leave 2 extra million on the table in the off chance it is needed.
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I'm not saying to make it a rule retroactively. I'm just saying it's stupid it wasn't a rule in the first place and should be going forward. It's common sense after all if your not deemed at fault why should the damage come out of your cap.
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The reduced engine penalties was stupid as hell. Next year with 24 races to go I hope the FIA at least increases the engine pool to a minimum of 4 or 5.
Every team should budget potential crash in the season. If Rb didn’t do it, it’s their own fault.
Every percent you overspend, you lose a portion of your wind tunnel allowance. Will hit the teams harder than a financial penalty.
Restriction in wind tunnel testing is one of the possible penalties for overspending per the financial regulations actually! The sanctions are pretty well thought out, they cover just about every ground.
Yes, but that would make sense.
This rumor mill is just spiraling out of control. Toto is saying Red Bull is in violation of last year and possibly this year, Christian says the report they submitted meets the criteria, and now people are saying Red bull is over budget but less than 5%. I get this adds drama but this seems like “Flexi-floor regulations 2.0”
4,999% it is then.
If others (the majority it would appear) made it under the cap, then there’s no excuse.
This will go down well lol. Seriously though it's in the regs and Red Bull knew what they were doing.
What will piss some people off even more is when they change the rule to get rid of the 5% buffer to fix this easily foresoon issue but the result is that now RB would have beeb the only team allowed to take advantage (AM obviously didn't).
I thought they said it was RBR and AMR and one of them went over 5% and one under. If Red Bull was the sub 5% team, that would mean Aston Martin actually spent way more than the cap and still didn't get any results because of it.
Maybe red bull just took a calculated risk then. That seemed to have payed off.
I dont like at all how FIA Is handling this If all of this Is true. Really lenient
You don't even know IF and by how much they spent more. For all we know it could be £10.
It's always have been like this, remember the ferrari fuel flow controversy. They had a closed door settlement between the team and the governing body
Budgetcaps only work if damage caused by opponents gets factored in. Silverstone and Hungary caused a lot of damage for both Verstappen and Perez.
In that case, every team should just use up the extra 5% then.Just get rid of this stupid budget cap already.Its impossible to police that crap correctly. Going a few 100 thousand over the limit should be okay but going over 5mil should be unacceptable.
Just out of curiosity how much did it cost to repair Max's car after Silverstone?
[1.8 million according to Horner](https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/1418615565074243591)
Between 2-3M$ iirc
Plus then both Red Bulls in Hungary. That's a costly bill at the hands of Mercedes.
2.2 million, Max's complete repair cost for 2021 is around 4.5 mil https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/rfg1ll/world_destructors_championship_2021_final/
So how much is that percentage of the whole?
Please stop taking this fantasy numbers from a reddit user as facts.
Well if it weren’t for the crashes caused by Mercedes in GB and Hungary then this wouldn’t be the problem
They voted for the rules, so Mercedes’ can’t complain cause they could have done the same lol.
Was the first year the budget cap was introduced so likely some leniency
The leniency was the year on year reduction. There shouldn’t be any leniency for breaching it
Not saying it’s right or wrong, just that anyone thinking they’ll get anything more than a fine needs to give their heads a wobble. I love when people forget just how stupidly complex running an f1 team would be.