(Motorsports news) Max Verstappen won his 16th race of 2023 as Red Bull continues to rewrite the record books with its superb RB19. The Mexico weekend marked one year since Red Bull was found in violation of the cost cap restrictions for 2021, which resulted in a fine and a reduction in wind tunnel and CFD development. As the reigning world champion, Milton Keynes received the lowest development allotment of any team as part of F1’s Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions.
However, Red Bull maintained their lead by not investing in major vehicle developments in 2023, whereas competitors were forced to do so. Despite being able to focus the majority of the team’s efforts on 2024, Horner claims the full impact of the handicap has yet to be seen. “Certainly, you’ve not seen the full impact yet because it obviously has compromised the amount of development that we’ve been able to do this year,” Horner told reporters.
“Thankfully, Red Bull had a very strong car at the start of the year, and we’ve been able to apply the majority of that development time, from early in the season, to next year’s car.” So that was significant. “With the wind tunnel restrictions that we’ve had, we’ve elected to use that on RB20, next year’s car, as opposed to continuing development on RB19.” Following a lengthy audit procedure that Horner thought had moved in the correct direction, all ten teams, including Red Bull, did comply with the budget cap for the 2022 season.
“It’s a very complex set of regulations that has evolved and the degree of scrutiny this year was phenomenal, in terms of the rigour that the FIA went to,” he said. “During the summer, we underwent a full colonoscopy.” And I believe the FIA is learning as well. “Of course, each company is structured differently, which adds to the complexity, whether you have subsidiary accounts or what your reporting group is.”
“I think the FIA has actually done a pretty decent job from what we’ve seen over the last 12 months.” Alpine’s temporary team boss, Bruno Famin, noted that the FIA is actively assisting teams in reporting their expenses because it is “easy to make a mistake. We’re working in Formula 1, Formula E, Le Mans and trying to assign the right expense to the right project is sometimes very difficult,” he said.”
The FIA is helping us to try to make it clear, as we are trying to help the FIA as well to improve their process because it’s so complex that it’s quite easy to make a mistake somewhere or to make a misinterpretation of what they want.”
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