Red Bull is “very confident” in its submission to the FIA as news of a potential budget cap breach looms on Wednesday.
A war of words broke out during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend after the Milton Keynes-based outfit was named as one of two teams who are rumoured to have broken the 2021 cap of $145m, the other being Aston Martin.
But Red Bull boss Christian Horner was adamant in his belief his team had done nothing wrong.
“Certainly not aware [of any breaches],” he told Sky Sports initially. “The accounts were all submitted way back in March so it’s been a long process with the FIA.
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“Next week is when they declare the certificates, certainly our submission was below the cap. It’s down to the FIA to follow their process, which they’re currently doing.
“It’s a brand new set of regulations and a set of very complicated regulations so how rules are interpreted and applied, inevitably is going to be subjected between the teams.
“I’m sure as the years go by things will get tidied up but we’re confident in our submission. There’s always going to be rumours. I’ve heard of major breaches and whatever. I’m certainly not aware of that.
“We’re very confident in our submission. Anything different to that, then we’ll wait to hear from the FIA.”
Tensions soon built, however, when Mercedes boss Toto Wolff responded to the rumours, claiming Red Bull had been investigated for “months” and that it was an “open secret” that one team, implying Red Bull, had gone “massively over” the 2021 budget cap.
Unsurprisingly, that drew an angry reaction from Horner on Saturday.
“Do you think that’s a coincidence or do you think there might be a bit of a campaign to discredit what the team has done? It’s somewhat suspicious timing,” he said.
“The thing that confuses me – obviously there have been some extremely defamatory remarks made. The [budget] submission between all the teams and the FIA is a confidential one, so I have no idea what the status of any other team’s cap is.
“I would love to know where his (Wolff’s) source of information is because I have no idea on the condition of Mercedes or Ferrari’s submission.
“One has to ask ‘where is that information?’, how does he think he knows what our submission is? Our submission we believe is fully compliant with the regulations, it had to be signed off by our auditors way back in March.
“I think the FIA have come out and made it very clear they haven’t even concluded their process. How can anyone make that claim?
“It’s ridiculous, disappointing and the scale of the comments that have been made, you can only see it as a way of trying to discredit everything we’ve done both this year and last year and even talking about future years.
“It’s appalling that these comments go without any kind of retribution.”
Wolff though pointed to Red Bull’s greater number of upgrades compared to Mercedes and Ferrari to suggest their spending must be significantly higher.
“We obviously monitor closely which parts are being brought to the track from the top teams every single race, 2021 and ’22 season,” he said.
“And we can see that there are two top teams that are just about the same, but there is another team that spends more.
“So we know exactly that we’re spending three and a half million a year in parts that we bring to the car and then you can see what difference it makes to spend another $500,000 – it would be a big difference.”
Such was the furore that ensued, the FIA issued a statement declaring the process of analysing if teams had met the budget cap was being finalised and that any breaches would be dealt with irrespective of external speculation.
But Wolff was optimistic the governing body would respond appropriately if there was a breach of the budget cap.
“At the end, there is a process. On Wednesday, there will be certificates of compliance issued or not and then if somebody has not complied, there is a process and governance that is in place,” commented the Mercedes boss.
“For me, I am 100 per cent sure the FIA will do the right thing, so everything else is all chatter until then.
“Plus, it is important the cost cap is being complied with. It is a cornerstone of the new regulations and I very much hope all of the teams have done that.”
Potential punishments for exceeding the cap include championship points deductions or exclusion, suspension from practice and/or qualifying sessions, fines and a reduction in wind tunnel testing and/or the budget cap for the following year.
