F1 News: Ferrari And Red Bull Demand Clarity Over Cost Cap As They Expect To Break It
With F1 teams now limited to a budget of ‘only’ $140 million this 2022 season, Ferrari is feeling the pressure to stay below it as inflation and prices skyrocket.
Christian Horner has admitted that it’s gotten so bad, that teams could potentially miss races altogether so as to not go over these set budgets.
With this in mind, the F1 and FIA are now looking to come up with a lift of budget, but it’s rumoured that not all of the teams will benefit from this.
Now, Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has commented on this, admitting that if these caps aren’t raised, the team will have no choice but to break it.
He said:
“In the regulations, there is a threshold which is 5%, and if you do not exceed the 5% on top of what’s the budget cap threshold, it could be considered a minor breach.
“How will they decide on that in terms of penalty, I have no idea.
“I don’t think there is any way for us and for many teams to stay within, and even laying off people I don’t think that’s the right choice.
“It’s already summertime, and the benefit is not sufficient to cope with the excessive prices and cost. So what will be the implications?
“What will be the most important is many teams will breach it and I think that will be simply bad for the financial regulations.
“If we are breaching the financial regulations, then I think we will start debating if the financial regulations are working, and it will put everything back in discussion.”
Horner added that he believes this will be the same story with all the “major” teams this year, admitting that Red Bull will too push over the cap, and will need more clarity on what this means for the championship:
“I think all the major teams are going to breach that $140m cap this year,” he admitted. “But what is the penalty for a minor breach?
“What we don’t want to do is end up is playing a game of chicken as to say, do you go for 4.9% over, do we go for 4.7%? And that could be one upgrade: that could be the differentiating factor of this world championship.
“I think what we do need is clarity and clarity quickly. Because quite simply, it’s not right we should be held to ransom by a couple of teams who aren’t perhaps affected. That was never the design of the budget cap.
“The budget cap was there to limit the top teams from a spending frenzy.
“None of us could predict when we came up with the budget cap figures, which if you remember, were reduced by $30 million where they were originally set during the pandemic, the world events that are driving inflation.”
