Formula 1 chief Stefano Domenicali is “more than nervous” about the possibility of more teams breaching the budget cap in 2022.
Last year, reigning champions Red Bull were fined $7m and given a 10% reduction in wind tunnel testing time after being the only team found to have exceeded the cap in 2021 in what was a ‘minor overspend’.
However, the fallout from that breach continues with Ferrari chief Fred Vasseur recently calling it a “very light” punishment as Red Bull currently dominates the early part of the 2023 season.
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As a result, Domenicali is worried about the potential ramifications of further breaches when the assessment of the financial regulations for 2022 is completed later this year.
“I’m more than nervous. I’m pretty sure that everyone understands now what the effect is if there is a breach, and I totally agree that the focus on this will actually be very big,” he told Sky Sports.
“I think that is a point of attention mainly for the credibility and to check if everyone is respecting that rule, but [it] has to be done earlier than later.
“We are discussing and this is on the FIA’s side to make sure that the control and the certification will be done much earlier because the effect, if some teams will be over it, has to be done in a proper way in as short a time as possible to be more credible.
“We see other sports that are tackling the financial regulation with, in my opinion, too long a time for a reaction – and this is not good.”
Last year, high inflation meant the FIA agreed to a $3m increase to the original $140m budget cap for 2022, but Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko still predicts up to six teams are at risk of breaking the financial rules because of the increase in costs.
And asked if Red Bull could again be one of them, team boss Christian Horner was coy.
“You could never be 100% sure,” he told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.
“I think that certainly all the aspects that were a reason for us to be over in 2021 which, remember, it was the very first year of a set of very complicated regulations, we’re confident that we should be comfortably within the cap for 2022,
“The amount of development we did and, particularly, crash damage that we had was significantly less than our two competitors. So, obviously, until you’ve got the certificate, nothing is 100%.
“But I’d be very surprised if we weren’t fully within the cap.”