Red Bull F1 Boss Begrudgingly Accepts ‘Draconian’ Penalty for Cost Cap Breach

Red Bull chief Christian Horner has described the sanction his team received as “draconian” in the wake of its cost cap breach.

Red Bull was found to have exceeded the cost cap limit and was fined $7 million along with a 10 per cent reduction of its aerodynamic testing time in 2023.

Speaking at the F1 Mexican Grand Prix on Friday, Horner outlined that Red Bull “accepts the penalties, begrudgingly” and says it will impact on upcoming seasons.

“The more draconian part is the sporting penalty, which is a 10% reduction on our ability to utilize our wind tunnel and aerodynamic tools,” said Horner.

That refers to Formula 1’s sliding scale of aerodynamic testing time, whereby the champions receive 70% of the mean time, increasing by increments of 5% to 115% for the team 10th place in the Constructors' Standings.

With the penalty, Red Bull’s allocation will be reduced to 63%.

“I’ve heard people reporting today that that is an insignificant amount, but let me tell you that is an enormous amount,” said Horner. “That represents anywhere between 0.25s and 0.5s of lap time. That comes in from now, it has a direct effect on next year’s car and it will be in place for a 12-month period. By winning the constructors’ championship we have become victims of our own success by, in addition to that ten percent, having five percent incremental disadvantage or handicap compared to second and third place. A draconian amount. So that 10 percent put into reality will have an impact on our ability to perform on track next year.”

In explaining why it will impact on development of the 2023 and 2024 cars, Horner said: “Fundamentally it means we are going to have less runs in a simulation tools, primarily the wind tunnel. That means that the funnel of ideas that you can apply to the development of your car is going to be much more restricted. We are going to have to pick and choose what we want to test and what we want to run in the limited wind tunnel time that we have.”

Despite the breach, Horner dismissed the notion that Red Bull should offer an apology.

“To be honest with you, I think we’re probably due an apology from some of our rivals for some of the claims they have made,” said Horner. “We make no apology for the way that we’ve performed, the way that we’ve acted. We do take on the chin that there are lessons to be learned and potentially mistakes have been made in our submission, which with the benefit of hindsight with 20:20 vision everybody can be a specialist, but there was no intent.

"There was nothing dishonest and there was certainly no cheating involved, which has been alleged in certain areas. So I don’t feel like we need to apologize. I feel like there are lessons that have been learned, everybody can learn from this…

"We’ve taken our pounding in public, we’ve taken a very public pounding through the accusations that have been made by other teams, we’ve had our drivers booed at circuits, and the reputational damage that has been made by allegations has been significant. The time is now for that to stop and to move on.”