The penalty for what has been deemed a £1.8million ($2.4m) Formula 1 budget cap overspend has been set at a 10% reduction in aero simulation going into 2023.
This is the outcome of what is believed to have been a long discussion between Red Bull and the FIA once the latter had determined what it believed the overspend to be.
Although it may sound odd, Red Bull would not have been without some negotiating power in those discussions, as the background possibility of legal recourse by the team was always there for what it felt was an ambiguous situation given the newness, complication and untested nature of the financial regulations. The FIA in turn would be keen to finally put the matter to bed.
Whether the penalty is appropriate to the offence is to an extent a subjective matter but eventually it all boils down to lap time.
What lap time benefit would a $2.4m overspend – which is what £1.8m equates to using the financial regulations’ currency conversion method – be expected to bring, and how much aero simulation restriction would equate to that lap time?
Rival teams’ position on this varies. From each million dollars being worth around 0.1s of lap time (so 0.24s in this case) with a reduction in aero sim of around 20% needed to achieve a balancing 0.24s penalty going forwards. To the $2.4m overspend being worth only around 0.1s – but requiring a much bigger restriction in tunnel time/CFD capacity to achieve this because of the highly prescriptive nature of the current aero regs. Up to a 40% reduction would be needed, some insist, to offset the gains made by the overspend.
The FIA has eventually settled on the 10% plus the $7m fine – and that is the end of the matter regardless of whether Red Bull’s rivals feel it is appropriate or not.
