Red Bull doubts their development budget is significantly less than Ferrari's for the rest of this Formula 1 season.
In 2022, teams are limited to just $140m under the cap that was first introduced last year. For the bigger outfits, particularly Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, this has meant significant cuts have had to be made to comply.
The cap also means teams are having to be more strategic about introducing car upgrades, with Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto suggesting Red Bull has put more resources into the early part of this year.
“Red Bull had better pace, as it was in Imola, they were a couple of tenths a lap faster, but they have developed the car since the start of the season, which we didn’t really," he said after Max Verstappen passed both red cars to win the Miami Grand Prix.
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“They have spent money as well so I hope that at some stage with the budget cap they’ll stop developing while we have some upgrades available.
“The budget cap situation, I don’t think they can develop so much, and I’m hoping that will not be the case for the rest of the season.”
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko was quick to respond, calling rumours that the team has spent 75% of their development budget "nonsense" and countering Ferrari's claim.
“I don’t think we are in a significantly different position than Ferrari in this respect,” he suggested to Motorsport-Total.com.
“Especially as I wonder what effect it has on them that Carlos Sainz has already crashed the car several times, that can’t be cheap!”
Ferrari has been the big beneficiary of the new 2022 F1 regulations so far, jumping from the midfield to take Mercedes' spot at the front of the grid.
And Binotto is hopeful of keeping pace with Red Bull for the remainder of the year.
“I always said we needed to wait five races to access the relative competitiveness as this is a brand new car so everybody will try to correct whatever was wrong at the beginning of the season, and after five races we are leading the championships still,” the team boss said.
“The package is a good package, we have not developed since the start, we will have some upgrades at Barcelona and we hope those upgrades will put us in the fight with the Red Bull.
“We know they are slightly faster on the straight and we have better downforce to go through the corners, but if I look at Miami they were as fast as us in the corners.
“That is down to the upgrades they did in the last races, so congrats to them, but as I said before I hope with the budget cap they snap at some stage.”
