06/03/2020
NEWS STORY
It is somewhat ironic that on the day the FIA essentially admitted that it couldn't prove Ferrari had broken the rules due to the "complexity" of the case, F1 managing director, Ross Brawn was claiming that enforcing the $175m budget cap from next season will be made easier as the teams will "self-police".
Indeed, the Briton believes that a combination of said self-policing and whistleblowing will ensure that the rules are not broken.
"What happens classically in Formula 1 is there is a constant circulation of personnel around the teams," he said, according to Motorsport Week, "and most of the indiscretions in Formula 1 have come out because someone has moved from one team to another and told them.
"Every team knows that they will never retain any fraudulent activity because someone will leave next week or the week after and they'll take that information with them," he continued.
"The teams have, in a very crude sense, this internal policing going on because they know that this engineer will move to another team next season and you won't be able to retain that information. So there's self-policing, there's a whistle-blowing system, and there's a strong group of auditors," he insisted.
"We've partnered with Deloitte, who have been very involved with a number of these sport initiatives, and we will meet some challenges for sure in the next few years. But unless we face up to that, we're never going to get this under control."
A keen Manchester United supporter, Brawn cited the example of rivals Manchester City, who along with rugby club Saracens have paid a heavy price for flouting the financial regulations that apply to their sports.
"My judgement is teams will be less cavalier in what they do because it's shown there's consequences," he said. "We've seen the Saracens situation in rugby, and there's been consequences for them.
"For us, that's a good thing because it shows there will be consequences if a team fraudulently breaches the cost cap regulations."