Red Bull and Mercedes appear to be out of the drama of cost cap violations in 2022, but the team’s fans don’t want to miss it.
Lewis Hamilton celebrated his 38th birthday on Saturday (January 7), and well wishes for the British man from all over the world poured in. Coincidentally, Red Bull posted a video on social media the same day of a fan-made cake modeled after Sergio Perez’s helmet.
Many replies to the post praised how realistic and accurate Cake looked, but many couldn’t resist bringing up the team’s cost cap violations.
One fan warned the team not to repeat its mistakes, writing:
“Don’t waste your budget”
Another fan predicted that the team would violate cost caps again.
“It looks like it’s going to go over the budget again.”
Here are some fan reactions to the Milton Keynes-based team’s Twitter post.
Red Bull’s cost cap breakthrough: recap
The FIA cost cap regulation was first announced as part of the 2021 interim rule changes. Technical regulations have been postponed to his 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but financial regulations remain.
The cap was set at $175 million for the 2021 Formula 1 season and was lowered to $147.4 million on May 27, 2020. The cap does not include marketing costs, race driver compensation and the cost of his three highly paid personnel on the team. .
Reports of cost cap violations came to light in early October, and the FIA announced on 10 October that two teams had breached the 2021 financial rules. The announcement came a day after Max Verstappen won his World Drivers’ Championship in Japan.
Talks have begun between the FIA and Red Bull Racing over cost cap violations, but it was announced on October 23 that negotiations were put on hold following the death of Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz.
Five days later, the FIA revealed that Red Bull had signed an Accepted Breach Agreement (ABA). This meant that $7 million had to be paid to the FIA within 30 days of the ABA execution date. The team also reduced the allotted restricted wind tunnel testing and his CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) limits by 10%.
The FIA also said Aston Martin was fined $450,000 for procedural violations of the cost cap.
