Red Bull has made a dominant start to the new Formula 1 season partly because their penalty for breaking the budget cap in 2021 was so lenient, Ferrari believe.
The reigning world champions have won every grand prix so far this year and 13 of the last 14 rounds stretching back to July.
In October last year the FIA found Red Bull overspent the budget cap in 2021 by £1.864 million – 1.6% over the spending limit of £118m. The team was fined $7 million (£6m) and given a reduction in their development allocation under F1’s Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions.
However Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said the severity of Red Bull’s penalty is “very low” and likely to only cost them around a tenth of a second in car development over the course of the year. The fine does not come out of Red Bull’s capped spending and the money they saved on the enforced reduction in their wind tunnel runs and Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling can be spent elsewhere.
“It means that for me the penalty is marginal,” Vasseur told media including RaceFans yesterday.
“They did a good job but I’m still convinced that the penalty was very light,” he explained, pointing out the impact of the ATR cut may not be felt until later in the year. “You should consider the rate of development that we are doing this season – if you consider the fact that if you have a 10% ban it’s at the end, it’s not something linear.”
“And then you can spend what you are saving in the wind tunnel, you can spend it somewhere else, on the weight saving and so on,” he added. “I’m not sure that the effect is mega if you consider that you had an advantage at the beginning of the season because you spend more the year before.”
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However Vasseur acknowledged that despite their penalty Red Bull have also made good progress with their car.
“I don’t want to say that they didn’t do a good job because I think honestly, that they did a very good job on the car. I am not trying to make an the excuse at all. It’s not this. But if you ask me if the penalty is too light, I say yes.”
Red Bull and Ferrari’s Australian Grand Prix lap times
The performance gap between Red Bull and the Ferrari drivers was consistent throughout much of the last race, where winner Max Verstappen was seldom stretched, except when he passed Lewis Hamilton for the lead on lap 12, lapping significantly faster than the rest of the field as he did. Charles Leclerc retired his Ferrari on the first lap of the race.
2023 F1 season
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