Ferrari ‘not happy’ about Red Bull penalty for two reasons

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Ferrari have admitted they are “not happy” with Red Bull’s budget cap penalty and warned the punishment was “very limited”. Red Bull have been hit with a 10 per cent reduction in wind tunnel use and CFD testing next season after being found guilty of breaking the cost cap allowance.

The team were also hit with a financial penalty and will be forced to pay a massive £6.4million ($7mil) fine. However, Ferrari chief Laurent Mekies stressed the penalty was not enough as Red Bull have enjoyed a championship advantage.

They claimed Red Bull’s overspend could have contributed at least a couple of tenths of a second per lap. He stressed this would have a “real impact” on the outcome of races and eventually the world championship.

Mekies also revealed that Ferrari felt aggrieved that Red Bull did not receive a “cost cap reduction” for future seasons.

Mekies told Autosport: “As for the penalty, we are not happy with it, for two important reasons. The first is that we at Ferrari do not understand how the 10 per cent reduction of the ATR can correspond to the same amount of lap time mentioned earlier.

“Furthermore, there is another problem in that since there is no cost cap reduction in the penalty, the basic effect is to push the competitor to spend the money elsewhere. It has total freedom to use the money it can no longer spend on use of the wind tunnel and CFD due to the 10 per cent reduction, on reducing the weight of the car, or who knows what else.

“Our concern is that the combination of these two factors means the real effect of the penalty is very limited.”

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The FIA confirmed that Red Bull were found guilty of breaking the cap by £1.8million ($2.2mil). However, they said this would have been just £432,000 ($0.5mil) if Red Bull had submitted a tax report correctly.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner doubled down on his claim that the team gained no performance from its overspending at a press conference yesterday. He explained: “There was zero benefit, because the amount we went over, there were mitigating factors.

“Not one penny was spent on the performance of the car. I am astounded there were no other teams that found themselves in this position. Good for them that eight of them are fully compliant. There are lessons to learn. Did we see any on-track performance? No, we didn’t.”

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