Red Bull has responded after Ferrari chief Fred Vasseur claimed their current domination was due to a “very light” budget cap penalty.
Last year, the current championship leaders were fined $7m and docked 10% of their wind tunnel testing time for a minor overspend of the budget cap in 2021.
However, so far there has no been notable impact on Red Bull from that penalty, and Vasseur feels there won’t be going forward.
“Both! They did a good job, but still the penalty was very light,” he told The Race when asked which was more influential to their current pace advantage.
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“If you consider the rate of development that we have during the season, the fact that if you have a 10% ban at the end – it’s not something linear. Then you can spend what you are saving somewhere else on weight saving and so on.
“I’m not sure the effect is mega. And if you consider [also] that you have an advantage at the beginning of the season because you spend more the year before…
“I don’t want to say that they didn’t do a good job because I honestly think that they did a very good job on the car. So, I am not trying to find an excuse at all. It’s not this.
“But if you ask me if the penalty is too light, I say yes.”
Unsurprisingly, Red Bull boss Christian Horner had a different view, believing it was too early to draw such a conclusion.
“Everybody’s got an opinion and I think everybody’s free to have an opinion,” he told Sky Sports.
“The team have done a great job over the winter on limited wind-tunnel time that we’ve had to develop this car, and of course that will have an impact later into the year and on next year.
“So on a snapshot of three races, I think it’s still hugely premature in (terms of) this season, there’s an awful lot of racing still to go.
“We’re hearing of big updates coming for both Ferrari and Mercedes when we get back to Europe.
“So we’re certainly not taking anything for granted, we’re just focused on ourselves, doing the best job we can within the constraints that we have.
“We’re doing the best that we can with what we’ve got and we know that it’s tough penalty, it’s one that we’re taking on the chin and we’re applying ourselves in the best way that we possibly can.”
