McLaren chief Andreas Seidl believes Red Bull overspent on salaries and benefit packages after the energy drink giants were accused of breaking budget cap rules in 2021. The FIA are currently reviewing team’s spending for last year and have insisted any breaches will be dealt with “according to the formal process set out in the regulations.” Red Bull are one of two teams, alongside Aston Martin, who are rumored to have fallen foul of the rules. And if they are guilty of the offenses, their superstar driver Max Verstappen could be stripped of the F1 world title he won last year.
“We have an obligation to our people, from the FIA’s side and from our side, because even for a team like us the introduction of the cost cap meant we had to put some really serious measures in place which were affecting our people,” Seidl said ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix. “We had to make people redundant as well. We had to ask our people to accept pay cuts or pay freezes, which was very serious.
“At the same time there was, especially from two teams, an incredible aggressive hiring still ongoing, throwing incredible salaries on the table and offering unbelievable company benefit packages where we are all wondering how this is possible in this new world of Formula 1 and our people are obviously challenging us if we do everything right on our side.
“That’s why we simply welcome clarity on this because in the end we will find out that if maybe we have missed something on our side or if there actually were breaches ongoing and we have a clear explanation why certain teams can do certain things which we were simply not in a position to offer to our people.”
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Any budget breach under £4.5million will be deemed a ‘minor violation’ under current rules and will result in a financial penalty. But if Red Bull are found to have overspent by more than that figure, it will be classed as a ‘material overspend’ and could result in a points deduction and an exclusion from last year’s championship.
And Seidl has called for the FIA to investigate the claims thoroughly. “Having experienced, ourselves, now in the last 12 to 18 months the audit from FIA’s side, which was done in a very thorough and diligent way, I’m absolutely convinced that the establishing of the numbers can be done in an absolutely correct way , ending up in comparable numbers between the different organizations,” he added. “I don’t have any doubt there.
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“Now it’s simply important that there is full transparency of what is actually happening, because it is clear that if someone is spending more money going beyond the cap, it’s a performance advantage. In the end, the financial regulations now are as important as the sporting one or the technical ones – there’s no difference.
“It’s very important that, from the FIA’s side, they make sure that they police them properly, enforce them and put proper penalties in place in case there is any infringement, even if it’s done affecting championship outcomes from the past.”
