Red Bull facing punishment for breaching F1 cost cap

Red Bull and Aston Martin have been found in breach of Formula 1 financial rules, the motor sports governing body (FIA) announced on Monday, saying any punishment would be decided at a later date.

The FIA said a review of the teams had found that  Red Bull, home of world champion Max Verstappen, “is considered to be in procedural and minor overspend breaches of the Financial Regulations” with Aston Martin “in procedural breach of the financial regulations.”

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The FIA said it was “currently determining the appropriate course of action to be taken.”

A “minor overspend breach”, the statement said, is less than 5 percent of a team’s total cap and can “result in financial penalties and/or minor sporting penalties.”

The FIA said it’s ‘Cost Cap Administration’ had finished a review of the financial documentation submitted by each team for 2021 and ‘issued certificates of compliance to seven of the ten’. 

The third exception was Williams, where there had been a problem with “a previous procedural breach” which the team had “remediated” in a “timely, cooperative and transparent manner”.

No formal investigation

The statement stressed that because the season under review was the first with a cost cap, the FIA had limited itself “to reviewing the submissions made by the competitors and that no full formal investigations were launched.”

The statement said that the first option for the Cost Cap Administration was to agree a settlement with the team involved.

The cost cap is intended to limit spending to make the sport viable and also to close the competitive gap between teams.

The statement added that “the regulations are highly complex, reflecting the complexity of the sport as a whole.”

It also said that all the teams “acted at all times in a spirit of good faith and cooperation throughout the process”.