Salary cap, Shmalary Cap

[Tourer]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

It wasn't just a "small" amount that they overspent on as the FIA's report makes clear; it only appears that way because the audited accounts that they provided showed that they had underspent by about £6 million because they under-reported on a number of cost centres as my quote from last week shows:

Never claimed that it was small - what I said was "not large" - semantics I know but there is a difference. To my mind, an overspend of 0.37% on the cap is definitely "not large" and I think that a $7 mill fine and the wind tunnel reduction may discourage other teams from deliberately going over in the future, with the risk of possibly bigger penalties.

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

Actually isn't a more accurate statement that the overspend was small, but their error in accounting was large.

Richard

I'd agree with that. By their accounting, some wriggle room under the cap was left but in reality that room was burnt up by the reported errors. If they'd been 0.37% under the cap, the accounting error, whilst large would not matter - they would be under. In this case, they are over by an amount that isn't large and have been penalised for it - as they should be.

[Tourer]

Originally Posted by Teretonga

Totally agree Mike. That is why I feel the penalty is not adequate, because it does not reflect the extent of the possible advantage gained. The 7 million might be good for the FIA but it does not provide enough redress for the teams that remained within the cap.

Possible advantage from a $432,652 overspend is likely negated by the $7mill fine and loss of wind tunnel time. That is the redress that the other teams get - with so much claim and counter claim on lasting benefits (or not) it's hard to see where the truth really lies. Might be draconian, might be spot on, might be light but getting agreement in the paddock on that would be next to impossible.

[S griffin]

I have just had enough of Horner playing the victim through this whole episode. Him even having the gall to say the other teams should apologise to them! Talk about deluded

[Tourer]

Originally Posted by S griffin

I have just had enough of Horner playing the victim through this whole episode. Him even having the gall to say the other teams should apologise to them! Talk about deluded

Yeah I'm with you - for whatever reason, both Red Bull and Mercedes LOVE playing the victim and both do so with monotonous regularity. It's boring, childish and really quite pathetic.

Don't often see the other teams doing it (although it happens) but RBR & MB - they just can't leave the desire to be a victim alone.

[billy bleach]

Originally Posted by S griffin

I have just had enough of Horner playing the victim through this whole episode. Him even having the gall to say the other teams should apologise to them! Talk about deluded

Does anyone care or listen?.....

[Anyopenroad]

Red Bull seem to have a very deep-rooted view of themselves as plucky newcomer underdogs fighting the corporate might of the car industry and the vested interests of the sport.

Wolff’s whinging seems to come from a sense that the sport wants Mercedes to fail and have arranged the regulations and made decisions deliberately to rein Mercedes in.

Both viewpoints have a kernel of truth - Red Bull do not have the heritage of Ferrari or the industrial might of Mercedes, while it really does seem that the regulations disproportionately affected Mercedes. But in both cases that seed of truth has been allowed to grow into unedifying paranoia. I personally find Horner more obnoxious - his perpetual sense of victimhood is really tiresome. But Wolff also needs to realise how silly “they are all out to get us” sounds from someone backed by Daimler.

All IMHO of course!

[S griffin]

To be fair if Wolff has a gripe, he’ll usually say his piece and move on. And most of the time he’s just answering questions. Also he can admit to Merc’s own failures

Horner OTOH, will bang on about something till the cows come home and will provide his own platform to shout from if necessary and will try to protect the Red Bull brand at all costs.

Not saying Wolff is perfect, sometimes he says stuff that makes me cringe, but he has shown more humility IMO

[morninggents]

Originally Posted by Tourer

So now we know - Red Bull DID get it wrong and ARE copping a penalty - no pushing the boundaries or finding a loophole that other teams didn't. The infraction wasn't especially large as it turned out (particularly if the tax credit is factored in, as it should be) and the penalties applied are pretty strong in comparison, which they need to be as a deterrent.


There are thoughts that I have on all this, now that we have the whole story:

• RBR's finance department needs to have a good long look at itself - how on earth could they miss the tax credit for example.

It would be interesting to know more about this 'tax credit'. It could be a refund of tax paid in previous years in which case should it impact 2021?

[morninggents]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

That is putting it too politely, I feel. To my mind they overspent by a large amount because their own accounts were hopelessly incorrect, but which they wanted the FIA and the world to believe was an accurate reflection of how much they actually spent. Nothing can escape from the fact that they spent £6 million more than they claimed, whether that was in error or deliberate. However, I am not claiming the latter, but they must surely have gained an advantage from the overspend.

But their total overspend was £1,864,000 which, after the tax credit of £1,431,000, netted out as an overspend of only £433,000. 0.37% as quoted elsewhere in this thread. I think that is on the 'minor' side of errors.

Mike, you quote earlier that they overspent in 11 out of 14 cost centres. Not sure where you got that from but what does it matter anyway if they decide to spend more on coffe, tea and buscuits and less on performance development (for instance). The total overspend is minimal. The budget is the budget to be spent, presumably, as teams wish with the only restriction being wind tunnel time.

I think Red Bull have been penalised appropriately.

[Mike Harte]

Peter, I don't disagree that if RBR had submitted a correct set of accounts that the overall overspend would have been less than a million. However, Horner kept insisting that their audit was, without doubt, below the cost cap. Yet the FIA actually found that they had understated, excluded and/or adjusted costs 13 areas, which meant that they spent £5,607,000 more than they wanted the world to believe that they spent on producing 2 F1 cars for the 2021 season. As you say, it matters not a jot about where they overspent, it was still an overspend.

For clarification, the figures and some of the words I have taken from the official release published by the FIA on Friday by way of a PDF (rbr_public summary_aba_-_article_6.32_1.pdf . Unfortunately, I can no longer find it on the FIA's website - where I downloaded it on Friday soon after it was released - and I have it on my laptop but don't know how to provide a link.

The problem that I and others have with the matter is that none of us know how much benefit RBR gained by spending over £5.5 million more than they believed that they did, and has that extra funding bought them two WDCs? Unfortunately, we will never know.

As to the tax credit, the FIA stated that their cost cap adjudicators did believe that it would have been applicable to the 2021 accounts.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Peter, I don't disagree that if RBR had submitted a correct set of accounts that the overall overspend would have been less than a million. However, Horner kept insisting that their audit was, without doubt, below the cost cap. Yet the FIA actually found that they had understated, excluded and/or adjusted costs 13 areas, which meant that they spent £5,607,000 more than they wanted the world to believe that they spent on producing 2 F1 cars for the 2021 season. As you say, it matters not a jot about where they overspent, it was still an overspend.

For clarification, the figures and some of the words I have taken from the official release published by the FIA on Friday by way of a PDF (rbr_public summary_aba_-_article_6.32_1.pdf . Unfortunately, I can no longer find it on the FIA's website - where I downloaded it on Friday soon after it was released - and I have it on my laptop but don't know how to provide a link.

The problem that I and others have with the matter is that none of us know how much benefit RBR gained by spending over £5.5 million more than they believed that they did, and has that extra funding bought them two WDCs? Unfortunately, we will never know.

As to the tax credit, the FIA stated that their cost cap adjudicators did believe that it would have been applicable to the 2021 accounts.

Direct link for that document if anyone is curious...

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/fi...cle_6.32_1.pdf

Finding docs on the FIA site can be an adventure. The race specific stuff is not hard to find. Others can be more difficult at times. This one is found by looking at the "news" items in the main page and then digging into older "news" items to find their press release. Which has a direct link for the document in the press release/news item.

Richard

[Mike Harte]

Thanks, Richard. It was easy to find last week as it was included with their documents issued in Mexico, and then disappeared and I gave up.

[Skam85]

Originally Posted by S griffin

I have just had enough of Horner playing the victim through this whole episode. Him even having the gall to say the other teams should apologise to them! Talk about deluded

He was a bit gaslighty absolutely - but what needs to be determined also is how the info about specifically RB and Aston Martin was leaked, because that is also not okay.

[Adam43]

What’s the real concern here.

Are we worried that if it wasn’t leaked we’d never have found out anything was wrong? So we need Kronos why someone decided to leak?

I’m more concerned that this is used to distract from the misdemeanor that has occurred.

[Tourer]

Originally Posted by Adam43

What’s the real concern here.

Are we worried that if it wasn’t leaked we’d never have found out anything was wrong? So we need Kronos why someone decided to leak?

I’m more concerned that this is used to distract from the misdemeanor that has occurred.

Can't speak for others but clearly the certificates would have been issued to compliant teams and those not compliant announced and dealt with (as happened with Williams earlier in the year) - so we'd have found out that something was wrong.

My concern with leaking is that firstly, others seemed to "know" before those in breach had been advised - that is very poor form. Secondly, the leaking created much speculation and hyperventilating about the size of breaches, which IMHO has blown this up into a storm beyond its real impact. Lastly, I think that leaking information about such matters is simply very, very unprofessional from a governing body and could in fact be seen as prejudicial conduct.

To my mind it doesn't distract from the misdemeanour but is something different that should be examined (but I doubt that it will be).

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by Adam43

What’s the real concern here.

Are we worried that if it wasn’t leaked we’d never have found out anything was wrong? So we need Kronos why someone decided to leak?

I’m more concerned that this is used to distract from the misdemeanor that has occurred.

The leakage and the whole conversation around it are like a debate about the Russia -Ukraine war propaganda and the confusion in narratives around that information.

If you want to disguise something real just distribute the leaks yourself and create so much angst and confusion that nobody is really sure who did what and what is actually really going on.

What if Red Bull deliberately leaked the 'information' to create disorder confusion and angst in what REALLY happened?

I don't actually think that was the case but there is no way now anyone will be sure of anything.
And the cost cap angst can be laid at the feet of the teams and the FIA because they agreed on a process that kept things shrouded in some secrecy.

A regulator should really keep everything up on the table so it is clear what the process is and what the consequences are, or will be, before the fact, not after it.
I understand keeping some things out of the public forum if the information is sensitive, but this is not what has happened here. The information now in the public realm is not commercially sensitive and never was.

It just makes the FIA actions look like a child's cloak and dagger board game without formalised consequences.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Tourer

My concern with leaking is that firstly, others seemed to "know" before those in breach had been advised - that is very poor form.

I agree - poor form.

And I agree it would be better if it hadn’t happened.

And it would have been dreadful if ultimately there hadn’t been anything in it.

But the original leak that there were a couple of teams and one was serious and the other that it wasn’t was pretty close so not really worried about misinformation (in this case).

[Skam85]

Not really in the sense of trying to make RB's breach seem less, I am just an F1 fan rather than specific or anti any team or driver, and I don't really subscribe to the "Red Bull, Christian Horner, Helmut Marko and Max are all the devils incarnate" chatter that some bang on about.

It was more in the sense of that is a pretty big breach of confidentiality and goes over the usual paddock gossip like "Nyck de Vries is in talks with every team in the paddock for a 2023 drive"

[EastonNeston]

By Matthew Syed, on of the leading sports writers in the Times

Delusional Horner is tarnishing the whole sport of Formula One
Red Bull principal is rivalling José Mourinho for gracelessness, Matthew Syed writes
November 1 2022, The Times
Lewis Hamilton was robbed. I think we should make that plain at the start of this column. I emphasise this because Christian Horner and Max Verstappen of Red Bull decided to boycott Sky Sports after one of their reporters used this word in relation to the finale of the 2021 season, after a controversial safety car restart in the last moments of the race. Even the FIA, the sport’s governing body, admits that this was a significant error from the race director.
So, permit me to say it again: Hamilton was robbed. If the rules had been correctly applied, he would now have an eighth world title. If the race director had done his job, Mercedes would boast another champion. Horner may now be pondering whether to ban The Times, and perhaps The Sunday Times too, on the basis of this assertion. If so, it won’t be long before Red Bull are avoiding all press outlets, and perhaps all social media too. Because “robbed” is the way most people think about that incident. This doesn’t imply that Hamilton was robbed by Horner or Verstappen — it just means that he was denied what was rightfully his, which is pretty much the textbook definition of the term.
But there’s another aspect to the controversy that has engulfed Formula One over the past few weeks. We now know that Red Bull broke the rules in the amount they spent last season. There is a limit set by the FIA and all teams sign up to remain within this envelope, but one team failed to do so. The amount of the overspend is — according to both the FIA and Red Bull, who accepted the verdict of the governing body — £1.864 million, amounting to 1.6 per cent of the budget, set at £114 million. This may not sound like a lot, but in a sport where margins are measured in factions, it might have been decisive.
So not only did Horner and his team benefit from a poor decision by a steward, in violation of the rules, they were also the beneficiaries of their own breach, albeit — they claim — an inadvertent one. So, let’s go back to Hamilton again: was he robbed? Is the terminology in keeping with what we know about the facts? I think most reasonable people will say “yes”. Indeed, it seems rather delusional to deny this, as Horner has sought to do.
But this isn’t the end of the matter. Zak Brown, the chief executive of McLaren, pointed out that when teams breach their spending limits, it amounts to “cheating”. “The cap is a rule, no different to the technical rules in the sport,” he said. “We feel it’s a performance benefit if someone has spent more than the allocated cost cap.” The word cheating is quite strong in this instance, but many people will agree with it. At the very least, Red Bull’s actions represented the gaining of an unfair advantage. Every other team was carefully audited and stayed within the agreed limits.
Yet Horner was scandalised by this terminology too. He claims that the breach was an oversight and had no performance effect, but this is a curious argument. If you exceed a budget, you presumably benefit from doing so, otherwise what is the point of the cap in the first place? Moreover, when it comes to breaching these (or any other) rules, it is surely important that the miscreants face reputational damage. Horner wants the payment of a fine — $7 million (about £6.07 million), to be exact — and reduction of permitted research to be the end of it, but that is too easy an escape route for a team awash with money. Social stigma is crucial for any rule to have teeth but this is what Horner is unwilling to accept.
And here we move from the regrettable to the surreal. Instead of owning up to his error, Horner has lashed out on those who have dared to criticise him. At a press conference last week, he said that the censure Red Bull has received has undermined his team’s “mental health” and has led to the children of staff being “bullied” in the playground. I had always thought that José Mourinho was the ultimate in gracelessness under pressure (to invert Ernest Hemingway’s quote) but Horner has taken it to a new level. How dare the Red Bull principal deploy sensitive moral issues such as bullying and mental health to deflect from his own rule-breaking.
If there are mental health issues at Red Bull as a result of their rule breach, the responsibility lies with them and them alone; not with those who have criticised them. To say otherwise is an Alice in Wonderland inversion, a gaslighting of those who stayed within budget. Like Mourinho at his worst, Horner is willing to blame everyone else, to distort reality, even to boycott those with whose opinions he disagrees, to sustain the pretence that everything Red Bull does is pure and it is only the ill intent of others that obscures this fact.
And, on the wider point, what of the mental health of the teams who have worked diligently to stay within the agreed budget? What about the drivers whose ambitions have been thwarted by Red Bull’s overspending? What about people with genuine mental health issues whose difficulties have been trivialised by Horner’s self-serving cant?
What makes this worse is that Horner is the first to point the finger at others when things don’t go his way. Remember at Silverstone when he lashed out at Hamilton after the clash with Verstappen, calling the British driver “desperate” and “completely out of order”? Remember when Horner savaged a “rogue marshal” after Verstappen received a grid penalty for failing to respect double yellow flags in qualifying at the Qatar Grand Prix? I could go on.
The older one gets, the more one realises that it is not winning that matters in life, but the way one conducts oneself. Horner may have won both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships this season but in his manner and example, he is tarnishing not only his team but F1, too. You might even — at the risk of a fresh boycott — call him a loser.

[peebee2]

Such a shame to see journalists with so little real grasp of the situation writing such tosh.

Yes, the final race had a big impact on the title.

Also, LH taking MV out at Silverstone had a big impact on the title. And should have been punished much more severely than it was. Anybody who ever drove a winged racing car around Copse knows that there was no way to pass there, and also that it was likely his last chance of the entire race to overtake.

Also, MV's driving on the Wellington straight should have been punished when LH should have passed him but he was blocked off by overly-aggressive weaving from MV.

The real point is either could have won the title - and deserved it. In either case, the loser would have been held up his his fanboys.

At the end of the season the driver who won the most races, took the most poles, shared the most fastest laps and led the most laps became Champion.

The end of the 2021 racing season was unsatisfactory and controversial, and definitely undesired. Hardly an undeserved Champion though.

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by peebee2

Such a shame to see journalists with so little real grasp of the situation writing such tosh.

Their grasp of the situation is that you have a team principal who has threatened to boycott a member of the press. They have rallied round as a result and are highlighting why Horner needs them more than they need Horner.

Horner has placed himself in this situation with his words and actions, and now has to face the consequences.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by peebee2

Such a shame to see journalists with so little real grasp of the situation writing such tosh.

What tosh is how I would regard this sentence. I believe that he has only written what a lot of people, who also know quite a bit about F1, and motorsport in general, think but haven't said.

Horner, and by extension Red Bull, have brought this on themselves.

[S griffin]

That is an excellent article and sums up a lot of what I’m thinking too.

I mean, trying to bring in staff kids getting bullied at school. What has that got to do with it? Let the school deal with it. Imagine a footballer telling the ref not to send him off for a bad tackle because his kids will get bullied at school if he does get sent off!

And yes, Horner really has shown himself to be completely hypocritical. He’s usually to protest his rivals over some technical advantage, yet here Red Bull has clearly broken the rules and he doesn’t like the fact that other teams are not happy about it.

[Anyopenroad]

Originally Posted by peebee2

The end of the 2021 racing season was unsatisfactory and controversial, and definitely undesired. Hardly an undeserved Champion though.

Syed - and indeed pretty much everyone else including me - does not dispute that Verstappen was a worthy WDC in 2021. The point Syed makes is that, deserving or not, Verstappen would NOT have been WDC had the last few laps of the 2021 been properly handled. It is a slight of language to take that latter point and spin it to accuse people of saying Verstappen isn’t a worthy 2021 champion. Those are two separate points.

I agree with every word Syed writes about Horner. To pick up on the post above from Skam85 - I don’t have a problem with Red Bull, whose contribution to F1 and action sports has been awesome; I admire Adrian Newey, the greatest car designer of his generation; I admire Verstappen as a generational driving talent, even if his entitlement and driving make him hard to like; I think Marko is unpleasant, but no more so than many others in F1 or indeed in life.

The person I have a strong dislike of is Christian Horner. He is just plain nasty. Gaslighting the rest of the paddock over the cost cap, defending the indefensible in some of Verstappen’s driving, throwing a “rogue” marshall under the bus to cover up a mistake, calling down the social media hounds of hell onto Hamilton, rank hypocrisy in how differently he describes driving by his team and others. The guy is a total ******* with no redeeming features.

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by Anyopenroad

Syed - and indeed pretty much everyone else including me - does not dispute that Verstappen was a worthy WDC in 2021. The point Syed makes is that, deserving or not, Verstappen would NOT have been WDC had the last few laps of the 2021 been properly handled. It is a slight of language to take that latter point and spin it to accuse people of saying Verstappen isn’t a worthy 2021 champion. Those are two separate points.

I agree with every word Syed writes about Horner. To pick up on the post above from Skam85 - I don’t have a problem with Red Bull, whose contribution to F1 and action sports has been awesome; I admire Adrian Newey, the greatest car designer of his generation; I admire Verstappen as a generational driving talent, even if his entitlement and driving make him hard to like; I think Marko is unpleasant, but no more so than many others in F1 or indeed in life.

The person I have a strong dislike of is Christian Horner. He is just plain nasty. Gaslighting the rest of the paddock over the cost cap, defending the indefensible in some of Verstappen’s driving, throwing a “rogue” marshall under the bus to cover up a mistake, calling down the social media hounds of hell onto Hamilton, rank hypocrisy in how differently he describes driving by his team and others. The guy is a total ******* with no redeeming features.

Yep.