Budget Cap Enforcement

I would love to see mercs spending this year. Update after update. Soon they’ll build an aero helmet for the greasy prince

 

Thou shall NOT question Mercedes! How DARE you even SUGGEST such a thing

Silly man. Don't you know that they are the protected god-kings of F1?

 

my bad

 

Everyone saw their delirious development updates since the first test in Bahreïn but shuuuuttt!!
One would say you are even a biased man because Mercedes do it always within the rules!

 

I sure hope this will backfire on MB, Toto and Ferrari. Sour losers and liars: Don't tell me Ferrari didn't go WAY over the budget cap themselves. The only difference is that they are hiding their numbers better. Half their staff now works for Haas.

This whole budget cap was a bad idea from the start. And from the beginning I said that this is impossible to control. Big teams can always hide expenses by delegating development work to smaller teams or other entities. I'm 100% certain this is not difficult for a company like Mercedes or even AMG.

 

Considering their powertrains unit is a completely separate entity (Mercedes HPP Ltd. vs Mercedes GP Ltd.) I'd say you're onto something.

Just like Ferrari with Haas or Red Bull with their newly-created powertrains unit, Alpha Tauri or both, these teams can easily circumvent the rules.

 

+1

For starter expenses like energy, wages, property are different from country to country, so are taxations and labour laws.
Any business knows that, and that's why they relocate where costs are lower.
That's how Western Europe car production has migrated to Eastern Europe and Turkey.

 

Absolutely. Think about all the global companies who are selling restricted goods (e.g. weapons) and how they circumvent the rules by having different corporations around the world and holding companies in places where they get tax shelters. F1 teams can do the same.

So it's all the more surprising that Red Bull was dumb enough to not hide everything (assuming the accusations are true).

 

Many posters in this neck of the woods would never believe that Mercedes exceeded any budget caps ... unless Mercedes publicly accused themselves of doing so

 

Exactly this.

 

Only way to fix it is to drop it. Who cares who spends more. The mid pack teams know they will not be able to compete anymore than they do now. Will F1 start adding 10# to every car that finishes first?

 

I certainly do not, and the budget cap shold have been over $200M to begin with.

The budget cap was supposed to KEEP the mid-pack and back-of-pack teams still racing--not that it alters the show in any meaningful way.

Why not let every team finishing out of the point subtract 10# from their "ups" weight; every race.

An 800 Kg car that score no points in 2022 can weight 700 Kg in 2023........No points in 2023:: 600 Kg in 2024.........No points in 2024:: 500 Kg in 2025........ Sooner or later <lack of> weight will bring them forward.

 

Im a fan of run what ya brung.. We race heads up in top dragster. I like the challenge of winning from the back,

 

Transparancy Benito?
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Ferrari paid a huge price for the Power unit story in 2019.
2020-2021 were two wasted years because of the weak Power unit.
If Red Bull is guilty for budget cap infringement I hope they will be impacted in the same way for 2023.

 

A huge price, that wasn't transparent to anyone but the Ferrari and the FIA.

Ferrari did something very clever for 2 years, didn't technically get caught even (remember, they several extra sensors on the car since 2018, and a couple of engine seized in 2019, and the FIA couldn't find anything!), but for Ferrari to claim the moral highground on transparancy of all things is peak hypocrisy.

Ferrari's mistake was not develop a powerunit that was fully legal alongside, for the moment they got caught with the very clever trick. It's only a matter of time. That's the reason for a poor 2020 and 21.

 

RB fans really salty if you still grasp for 2019. By the manner some still talk about it, feels like Binotto personally murdered someone.
Any transparency problem u have, you can direct towards FIA.
As far I'm concerned Ferrari did nothing different to what Merc/Red Bull did with their flexi wings in 2021. Yet no one yells bloody murder from that.
Only mistake Binotto did was to make a such a lausy deal with FIA in 2019, since years have shown that Merc/RB get scots free out of any situation.

 

I think you need to do a little bit of reading of my history here. I've been a very long time Ferrari fan (as pointed out to you several times before by others). The fact that I support Red Bull/Max as well is not really relevant.

All I did is point out the hypocrisy from Benito. And I did say back then as well, why did Benito cut a deal at all if FIA couldn't find ****?

You, me, or anyone else here, has a ****ing clue what RB did or didn't do. None. This could legitimately be that Red Bull bought a 5 million dollar machine, expects to use it for 10 years and thus it's cost is 500K for 2021, 22 and so on, and Merc/Ferrari having a hissy fit on that. Or it's nothing. None of us know.

Benito being all high and mighty about transparancy is utterly laughable giving the 2019 engine deal.

 

LOL. I am pretty sure that those teams are fully aware of what accounting depreciation is.

 

Need I remind you that it was Horner, not Binotto or Toto, who yelled about the budget cap the loudest last year, saying that just $200K could swing the championship to Mercedes, yet it's team that's been caught breaching it. It was also Horner who made the 19' Ferrari engine out to be akin to CrashGate 2.0, and Max said famously "that's what happens when you cheat!".

You think if Ferrari was being investigated privately by the FIA for breaching the budget cap that Horner wouldn't be right with Toto screaming for transparency, and calling Ferrari no good cheats? Bet your ass he would. Don't delude yourself.

Horner and Red Bull are caught in their own hypocrisy here in that, after preaching for transparency in 19', and a strict commitment to the budget from everybody else, it's RBR that are the first team under investigation for breaching the cap, with the FIA guarding the true nature of the breach from the other teams.

Bottom line: all of the team leaders are hypocrites. They all color outside the lines for an edge.

And yes, I typically like Max, RBR and Horner despite all this. It's racing. You play in the grey.

 

...you forget that Ferrari is the one that's been caught, Red Bull not (so far).

 

Man, we've been over this and how obvious it was last year Red Bull did develop more than Mercedes, and had to have spent more.

Why can't Horner just release the letter RBR got from the FIA as to why they were under audit, and for what amount? Why is he absurdly threatening to sue Toto and Binotto for what is run of the mill paddock accusation of cheating? I'm just going by the standard you set for Ferrari.

 

Again, think if it was Ferrari or Mercedes under audit by the FIA that Horner wouldn't be doing a 180, and demanding the details be made public? Don't kid yourself. He'd be advocating Ferrari be thrown out of F1.

 

How Red Bull could be so competitive this year with the RB18 after a close fight until the last race with Mercedes in 2021?
Ferrari barely improved their car last year to be able to put all their ressources in a competitive car this year.
Newey is an aero wizard but this is isn’t enough..

 

Or....we wait for the report to come out instead of pointlessly try and speculate? As all you have, or anyone else for that matter, is rumours, no facts, nothing.

All teams are being audited. Every single one. FIA apparently has questions for Red Bull. I don't know the process the FIA has but if they focus their time on a team by team, who is to say that the FIA didn't have questions at any point for Mercedes, Ferrari, or any other team for that matter? Those just weren't blown out of proportion. Anyone that's been through an audit before knows that the auditors ask for explanations 99% of the time. I can only imagine that it's no different for F1, probably even more so.

I haven't set a standard for Ferrari, Ferrari got caught in 2019 pure and simple. There's a difference between having been caught and having been accused.

My position on Ferrari having been caught now is the same as it was then: Indifferent to it and actually found their loophole extremely clever, and I'm pretty sure I called Benito an idiot for cutting a deal so quickly yet not have a backup engine in the works for all this time. That would've been a beauty and then some...create their cleverly tricked engine and be competitive, wait until you get caught, cut a deal, but the new engine is done by the book and instantly competitive. Instead Ferrari let the whole saga play out, cut a deal...then had to design an engine in record time. We all know how that played out.