Former F1 engineer Pat Symonds has claimed he has “zero sympathy” for budget cap complaints amid remarks from team bosses including Christian Horner. Symonds hit back at teams for “whining” about following the cost cap regulations.
The former Williams man even behind teams should just react to increased costs by making tough decisions on their development programme. Speaking at Autosport International. Symonds said: “I spent 42 years as an inventor in Formula 1, I always had a cost cap – we called it a budget. And that was the amount we are allowed to spend.
“When I hear certain people whinging on about the fact ‘oh, we’ve had an accident, so you know we need more money’. Yeah, I’ve had accidents as well. And I remember one year we had a very, very good development program going, and we had one of those periods in Monza onwards, I can’t remember what year it was [but] it was in the 90s, and we just had accident after accident after accident.
“The budget didn’t change, so we had to stop the development program we were working on – so I have slightly less than zero sympathy.”
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By October, Red Bull were found guilty of breaking the 2021 budget ca[rulesafterspendinganextra£432000($500000)Theteamwereslappedwithamajorfineandalsohandeda10percentreductioninwindtunneltestingandCFDdevelopment[rulesafterspendinganextra£432000(0000)Theteamwereslappedwithamajorfineandalsohandeda10percentreductioninwindtunneltestingandCFDdevelopment
Horner then hit back at the penalty as a “draconian” measure which could cost the team half a second per lap in 2023. Haas boss Guenther Steiner has also been fearful of F1’s budget cap after Mick Schumacher suffered a series of heavy crashes in 2022.
He wrote off his car in a massive qualifying shunt in Saudi Arabia and then suffered accidents in Monaco and Japan. But, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff revealed there was an “allowance” within the cost cap to adjust figures for big crashes.
This means teams will be allowed to spend extra if there is a need to build a new chassis.
