Formula 1

[DareToDibble]

 

[Ozanne]

Ross Brawn once said that if a team fraudulently breaches the cost cap then they can expect to lose their championships. Up to you now FIA. 

[squirrelarmy]

F1 used to be very black and white when it came to rule breaches. Anything that didn’t fall in line with the regulations was disqualification. 
 

That was when it used to be a sport though. 

[Ozanne]

Remember when Hamilton’s rear wing was out by 0.2mm and they disqualified him from the whole qualifying session? Well this seems a much bigger breach. 

[Ozanne]

They couldn’t get Lewis’ title off him fairly so not only did they have to screw him out of the title in Abu Dhabi, RBR also had to cheat.

[charlierc]

2 hours ago, DareToDibble said:

 

Oh good. The 2021 season gets to carry on forever.

My suspicion is that we'll end up with some kind of mutually disappointing sanction, similar to Ferrari's undisclosed settlement with the FIA over a potentially illegal 2019 engine or Racing Point getting a fine and constructor points docked for technical elements of their 2020 Mercedes clone - in effect one that disappoints the team getting it who think they did nothing wrong, and also disappoints many outside the team on trial who think it deserved a supermassive punishment.

Certainly, I doubt we're getting something like when they threw out McLaren in 2007. Much as I can guess that would be popular with quite a few people.

[Ozanne]

Max and RBR should be stripped of all titles in my view. 

[charlierc]

1 hour ago, Ozanne said:

Max and RBR should be stripped of all titles in my view. 

The early gossip on this indicates you might well be disappointed.

[charlierc]

24 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

EDIT:  also be interesting to see how much they went over by...  if its a £10k...  this might be a lot of talk about nothing...  

I mean it would be pretty funny if all this deliberation and argument was over a number of that figure or less.

We might still be a while yet before we know what, if any, punishment surfaces tbf or indeed by how much the cap was breached. Red Bull themselves said their math showed they were under, which means we might have two very different set of accounts to reconcile. So this could be a while, therefore giving plenty of time for more speculation, conjecture and arguments.

One early rumour I saw from a known RB-friendly journalist was less than $2m sparked by disagreement with FIA about staff benefits being included or excluded, including catering and sick/maternity leave. The former of which, naturally, giving off plenty of memes and jokes i.e. to quote one I saw that made me giggle, "It was a buffet Toto, we went catering"

An irony is that if it less than $2m, they might have legit been carried over due to the cost of rebuilding Verstappen's car after Silverstone (the damage of which was valued over $1m at the time) and the damage from the Bottas-induced crash that fucked up both Red Bulls at the next round in Hungary. A stretch, maybe, but if we're talking these numbers, every little helps.

[charlierc]

So basically, Red Bull and the FIA will now have a discussion on what comes next and if they fail to reach an agreement on what this all means, independent arbitration will be bought in.

As said above, I'm expecting this to take a while.

[DareToDibble]

Yeah this will go on well after this season has finished I expect. At the end of which, it'll likely end up being a fine.

[Ozanne]

Of course it'll be a measly fine, it was only ever going be a fine. The FIA were never going to do anything severe the RBR. Once again the FIA will look to protect them. The cost cap is dead in the water and team should now just breach it by a certain amount and take the hit of the fine.

 

Why did Ross Brawn claim a team would be stripped of their titles if they won't do that? A breach is a breach and should be clamped down on.

[Ozanne]

 

 

[DareToDibble]

I haven’t seen the full clip but apparently Ross Brawn stated that was in relation to major breaches so they wouldn’t apply here. 

We need to wait for the full information on how much they breached by. We know it’s under 5%, but that could be a huge range still.

[Ozanne]

He still said it as shown above, in his own words their titles should be stripped from them.

If they didn’t have enough money left for catering and sick leave, it’s because they spent too much on developing the car. Other teams clearly covered their catering, etc within the budget, as required, leaving less money for the car and even making several staff redundant. 

[DareToDibble]

If nothing else, we’re getting some great memes out of this.

[charlierc]

On 10/10/2022 at 7:41 AM, Barry Fish said:

Just been thinking about the season and how rubbish its been.

Taking nothing away from Max who is the best driver in the best car right now.

But with no effective opposition - including a team mate actually is a solid number 2 and only there in a supporting role - its been really dull.

Hope next season someone has the ability to challenge.  Teams obviously need to do a better job in the factory but it's been disappointing at points to see Charles and Carlos seemingly lacking the skills to constantly take the fight to Max.  Too many mistakes.

I worry there is only Lewis who can consistently take the fight to Max.

Can't work Russel out yet.  He had a strong start but Lewis is back on top now.

Be great to see Lando given a better car next year so he could fight and we could see his metal.

Was gonna respond until the cost cap and arguments got in the way first, but it's felt like a season that promised more than it has delivered.

Ferrari keep finding ways to shoot themselves in the foot, Mercedes got the new aero regs wrong and the midfield teams were closer to RB/Merc/Ferrari in 2021 than they have been this year, as reflected by just one podium for a driver over than Max, Checo, Charles, Carlos, Lewis and George (that being Lando at Imola). For a while, Perez was actually doing quite well against Verstappen but really lost momentum with 2 DNFs in 3 races and then poor performances at Paul Ricard and Budapest, though Verstappen just suits the car better overall.

There's still been good individual races - Barcelona was a surprisingly fun race despite its history of being a chore, Monaco was surprisingly good, Montreal had a nice one, Silverstone was excellent, Zandvoort had a few fun twists, the second half of Singapore was good fun (especially after an hour wait and stop-start first half) - but the overall pattern has been more hit-and-miss than last year, which despite all the controversy that continues to come along, seemed to just produce great races all the time.

Maybe one of the final 4 rounds in 2022 will be a belter. But I'm aware it's a harder sell with the title all sewn up.

Edited October 11, 2022 by charlierc

[charlierc]

20 hours ago, Ozanne said:

He still said it as shown above, in his own words their titles should be stripped from them.

If they didn’t have enough money left for catering and sick leave, it’s because they spent too much on developing the car. Other teams clearly covered their catering, etc within the budget, as required, leaving less money for the car and even making several staff redundant. 

Brawn did say this but the caveat is that the sanctions come in for fraudulent spending. If it had come out that Red Bull had spent $200M+ on the portion that's meant to be capped at $145M and deployed tricks to hide that, that's a problem that disqualification would have to be called for. But that's not what we're dealing with. It seems honestly more boring than that - the early talk is that there's a lack of conensus on what is and isn't exempt.

I personally think there's too many exemptions. Rather infuriatingly, different articles seem to make reference to different things being exempt from counting towards the cap, but this seems to have stemmed from disagreements between Red Bull and the FIA on what is exempt. In isolation, that's one thing and one that Red Bull will have to answer for, but the list of what you could have exempt means that all teams have options to hide excess spend in other ways: The $1.8 Billion Exemptions From F1’s Budget Cap (forbes.com)

Curiously, some pieces are suggesting catering and sick leave were meant to be exempt in the rules as first designed. If there's a turnaround of them no longer being exempt, as the first rumours hint, that could be something clarity is needed on, if only to evaluate if that really is why we're in this position in the first place.

[Ozanne]

If catering and sick pay is exempt then it couldn’t have been those reasons and there is more to it than that. It doesn’t really matter the reasons though as a breach is a breach and if they overspent for something fairly small it means they spent too much on other areas.

If they don’t clamp down on this now then it will give other teams license to breach the cap too.

[squirrelarmy]

12 hours ago, Ozanne said:

If catering and sick pay is exempt then it couldn’t have been those reasons and there is more to it than that. It doesn’t really matter the reasons though as a breach is a breach and if they overspent for something fairly small it means they spent too much on other areas.

If they don’t clamp down on this now then it will give other teams license to breach the cap too.

There was an article yesterday that says the consultancy fees charged by Adrian Neweys company were the reason they went over budget. 
 

Newey obviously has 0 influence over the design of the car. 

[Ozanne]

5 hours ago, squirrelarmy said:

There was an article yesterday that says the consultancy fees charged by Adrian Neweys company were the reason they went over budget. 
 

Newey obviously has 0 influence over the design of the car. 

They can’t win a world title fairly, Lewis is the last legitimate World Champion and deserves to have an 8th title. 

[phimill]

10 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

They can’t win a world title fairly, Lewis is the last legitimate World Champion and deserves to have an 8th title. 

I've been watching this thread recently - you are deluded mate! Yes its annoying RBR are winning now but let it go! LH will be back next year

[Ozanne]

3 minutes ago, phimill said:

I've been watching this thread recently - you are deluded mate! Yes its annoying RBR are winning now but let it go! LH will be back next year

Cheating/winning.

Look at what it took to get the title off Hamilton. If the FIA want to be taken seriously then they’ll clamp down hard on RBR here. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Ozanne

[squirrelarmy]

2 minutes ago, phimill said:

I've been watching this thread recently - you are deluded mate!

He’s got a point though. Do you think we’d have this shitshow if Ecclestone, Mosely & Whiting were still around. 
 

They had their flaws and their own share of scandals but they wouldn’t be standing for any of this crap.

[Crazyfool01]

29 minutes ago, phimill said:

I've been watching this thread recently - you are deluded mate! Yes its annoying RBR are winning now but let it go! LH will be back next year

Absolutely this !!  Christ he’s got 7 already ffs … I’m sure same people arguing it’s boring that max lead last race by 30 seconds don’t mention the dominance of Hamilton over a period of time .