PLAY THE COST-CAP GAME TO THE MAX

This point goes together with the need to keep pace in – or lead – the 2023 in-season development battle. But it’s one where we must enter the realm of speculation, paired with an acknowledgement of the facts as they stand in a murky, very F1 affair.

The revelation this month by the FIA’S Cost Cap Administration that Red Bull is“considered to be in procedural and minor overspend breaches of the financial regulations”on the 2021 cost-cap submissions raises serious questions for the flagship financial rule’s future. In turn, what happens next regarding cost-cap policing will determine precisely how car design processes are honed at the biggest teams.

Although the‘minor’breach tag suggests at this stage that no serious cost-cap fraud has been committed by Red Bull, Ferrari and others are pushing for any indiscretion in this area to be harshly punished. It’s important to stress at this point that Red Bull believes its submission was within the rules and that what the FIA has found concerns something it did not expect to be covered.

It isn’t yet known exactly how much Red Bull may have overspent in 2021, but to fall into the‘minor’territory it can only be a maximum overspend of $7.25million (5% of the $145m 2021 limit). It’s possible that indiscretion is thought to involve figures below this, but that is important for all the teams when it comes to considering what punishment may eventually be handed out. This is because of what an extra $7m for car development could buy.

“Five million is about half a second, even one or two million is about one or two tenths, which is about from being second on the grid or being on pole and maybe having the fastest car,”binotto said after the Japanese GP. “Obviously it’s about 2021, [but] 2021 is an advantage you gain over the following seasons.”

Although much of this is hypothetical thinking at the time of writing, if Red Bull (or any team in the future) is found to have definitely breached the cost cap and the punishment for doing so isn’t massive, then the lesson will be:‘the actual cost cap is higher’. Taking a putative slap-on-the-wrists fine guess at $5m, then that’s‘a year’s cost cap + 5% + fine’.

To make the gains Binotto outlines would surely be worth it for teams that can afford to spend it, of which Ferrari is one (and Red Bull and Mercedes are the others). This is cold F1 logic flying in the face of morality, and this isn’t to say that any of those teams actually would take such an approach, but such is the relentlessly pragmatic nature of this game that they wouldn’t be doing their jobs in not at least considering it.