It is widely anticipated that the FIA will announce the agreement it has reached with Red Bull - and Aston Martin - over their breaches of the budget cap on Friday.

Red Bull and the sport's governing body were in talks at COTA and it was widely anticipated that an announcement was forthcoming, however the death of Dietrich Mateschitz led to discussions being put on hold.

With talks now continuing it is thought that Red Bull has reached an Accepted Breach Agreement with the FIA, which essentially means that the Austrian team accepts that it breached the cap and is ready to accept the resultant penalty.

However, it is the penalty that is likely to cause further outrage in the paddock and on social media as the Austrian team is likely to merely face a fine and restrictions on windtunnel time next season.

The breach, described as minor by the FIA and totalling around $1.8m, is understood to relate to a number of factors including catering, sick pay, Dan Fallows gardening leave and tax.

Speaking at COTA last weekend, Christian Horner admitted that another factor over which there was a question mark was spare parts.

"We feel that with such an immature set of regulations, there's going to be clarifications and tidying up, and I think, certainly how unused inventory was treated was, in our view, a change to the regulation.

"Certainly we applied a very strict ruling in the way that we treated our new stock," he added. "And I think that a clarification came out in June that changed the application of that.

"That had a seven-digit effect on our submission," he admitted. "But, of course, retrospectively, we were not allowed to change our submission.

"What you have to remember is that the submission can constitute about 75,000 line items. So, there's an enormous amount of data that has to be inputted into these submissions and I think it's only natural that, in a first year we have a set of very complicated regulations, to be able to get its arms around everything, is almost impossible. Almost impossible. And interpretations have been made, maybe by other teams have been slightly different, and then a change like that has a huge swing in your application of how you've completed your form which, had we been able to resubmit at that point in time, we would have treated very, very differently.

"There's probably several teams that have been affected in that manner," he insisted.

Deemed to have committed a procedural breach, Aston Martin will most likely face a fine, as was the case with Williams.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Mad Matt, 28/10/2022 6:30

"Red Bull are trying to spin this as a minor accounting disagreement.... perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. The only thing I'd note is that they had a dry run and an opportunity to ask questions and they are the only team in this predicament........"

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2. Posted by Simon in Adelaide, 28/10/2022 3:30

"So, Red Bull spent $(x+1)million manufacturing parts, some of which were spares.

Through the season Red Bull used $x million worth of parts and that is what was in their financial statement.

The FIA’s position is that the full cost of manufacturing should have been included and not just the value of the parts used and are therefore deemed to have overspent by $1 million.

It would appear that the using v. manufacturing clarification came out after the financial statements were submitted.

I suspect that the penalty will be a “jolly good telling off” for the $1m and a x5 fine for the remaining $800,000.

"

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3. Posted by Max Noble, 28/10/2022 1:10

"@Roli - The “Driven to the Margin of Error” article addresses this point. There is a 10% tolerance on your speed reading in the car, and (depending on the speed camera type) a margin for error, and a programmed allowance. Typically in Australia in a 70 kph zone you’d need to be doing an indicated 79 kph on your speedo, which would be in the region of a real world 75 kph. On a country road (dual lane) with a 110 kph limit I’ve driven past a police car with my cruise control set to an indicated 115 kph… and they didn’t even blink… I’d estimate my real world speed at the time would have been around 107 kph.

…so… All measured data points need a margin for error, and then you have to consider the calibration of the measuring instrument. How accurate is your measure…? Now we have compounded error - observation error, and error tolerance in the measuring device.

75,000 lines of submission, exchange rates, measurement boundaries, cross-company charges, and as noted in the article, catering, gardening leave, sick leave, and tax law… no wonder no one can tell us the real figure!

@Kenji - I’m sure you can imagine how often Esteemed Editor Balfe, and I think that…!! :-)"

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4. Posted by kenji, 27/10/2022 22:27

"@Roli...did you actually read the post? "

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5. Posted by KKK, 27/10/2022 20:57

"Absolute joke. What's tge point of having a price cap when it's just ignored. If I got caught by a speed camera, I get a fine, no way of getting out of it a rule us a rule. By giving them a fine us just a joke."

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FIA's decision on budget cap breach due on Friday

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