Found guilty of violating the budget cap rules, the Red Bull team was fined $7 million and had a 10% reduction in their allocated time for aerodynamic testing.<\/p>\n
For Toto Wolff, boss of the Mercedes team, these sanctions are too lenient: “I think that for us, this sanction is too small. For them, it will be too big. I believe that any reduction in wind tunnel time is harmful. But the extent of the harm is difficult to estimate at this stage.”<\/p>\n
I think that in absolute terms, 7 million represents a lot of money. But considering things on a larger scale at Red Bull, especially the investment they put into their power unit and the team, it’s not much.<\/p>\n
Wolff agrees that today’s result will serve as an appropriate deterrent for other teams and help enforce the budget cap in the future.<\/p>\n
I think that the sum of sanctions is deterrent, the sports sanction, and to a lesser extent, the monetary fine. But the damage to reputation is probably the most important thing, and no team wants to get close to that, because today, we live in a compliant and transparent world.<\/p>\n
Regarding Christian Horner’s justifications, his counterpart at Red Bull, Wolff does not find them acceptable: \u00ab Nine teams are in compliance with the rules and have remained under the cap. This is a sport of marginal gains, and everything else is just talk. There are no mitigating circumstances. \u00bb<\/p>\n
Wolff takes the opportunity to praise the work of the FIA on the budget cap control: “What I find positive is the strong governance. Nothing can be swept under the carpet. The FIA has supported the process. And I think that, although this administration has only been in place for ten months, it is very encouraging to see that the rules are being enforced.”<\/p>\n
\u00ab What we need to address are the minor and major shortcomings. I think a violation is a violation. And that’s how it should be handled. \u00bb concludes Wolff, whose war axe doesn’t seem to be buried with Christian Horner yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The boss of the Mercedes team believes that the sanctions imposed on Red Bull for not respecting the budget cap are not significant enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":33620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[370,1334,1601],"class_list":["post-5069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-fia","tag-red-bull","tag-toto-wolff"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n