Red Bull has entered into an Accepted Infringement Agreement (called ABA), which in essence confirms that it acknowledges any infringement and agrees to any sanctions. It will be announced this Friday during the Mexican GP.
Aston Martin has also agreed to an ABA for its less serious procedural breach, details of which will also be revealed this Friday. The FIA will explain the areas that affect the compliance of both teams, as well as the corresponding sanctions.
Red Bull principal Christian Horner spoke at length with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem during the United States GP weekend, although those talks were technically left out of the official legal process.
Negotiations stalled after the death of Dietrich Mateschitz, but were concluded this week.
What penalty will the FIA apply to Red Bull for the F1 cost cap?
Red Bull has been found guilty of both a procedural violation and a “minor” overspend, estimated to be around $1.8 million. The team is expected to receive both a financial and sporting sanction.
The sporting penalty for Red Bull for skipping the cost limit will be a reduction in aerodynamic tests for 2023. As the constructors’ world champion, the team was already going to have less time in the wind tunnel and in the use of CFD than any of its rivals under the aerodynamic testing restriction rules.
For Red Bull, there is talk that the areas where they would have jumped the limit would be catering in the factory and feeding of employees, as well as payments of wages for sickness and dismissal, as well as how to treat leftover spare parts when end of the 2021 season, and its assignment to the heritage department.
It is believed that there may also be a tax problem .
Asked by Motorsport.com last weekend about the parts issue, Horner said it “had a seven-digit effect on our filing,” suggesting it was probably the biggest factor in Red Bull was over the limit. The director downplayed any potential performance advantage from overspending.
“The thing to remember is that the filing can be about 75,000 items,” Horner said. “Therefore, there is a huge amount of data that needs to be entered into these submissions and I think it stands to reason that, in a first year with a very complicated set of regulations, being able to have everything tied down is almost impossible. Almost impossible.” .
“And interpretations have been made, which maybe other teams have done slightly differently, and a change like that causes differences in the application of how a form has been filled out that, if we had been able to resubmit in At that time, we would have treated it very, very differently.
“So there are probably multiple teams that have been affected in that way.”
Aston Martin was found guilty of a procedural breach which is theoretically related to a specific UK tax issue that was interpreted differently by the team and by the FIA.
It is expected that the sanction against Fernando Alonso’s future team will be solely economic, as happened with Williams when it was considered that it had committed a procedural violation by submitting the documents after the deadline in the middle of this year.
“I think it’s complex, it’s complex regulations,” team principal Mike Krack said at Austin last weekend. “And it’s not frustrating, it shows us that we have to do a better job in the future so that we don’t have those problems.”
“But in the end, I think probably the most important thing is that we were under the limit. And the rest is procedural.”
