29/10/2022
NEWS STORY
Ferrari's sporting director, Laurent Mekies says the Italian team is not happy with the leniency shown to Red Bull over its budget cap breach, while contradicting Christian Horner's claim that the (10%) reduction on aero testing will hurt.
After weeks... and weeks... and weeks of waiting, the FIA finally announced the results of its analysis of the teams' financial submissions, and the penalties agreed following Red Bull's acceptance of an Accepted Breach Agreement.
Along with a $7m fine, the Austrian time faces a reduction in the time it is allowed to spend on aerodynamic testing in 2023.
It is the latter part of the penalty that Horner has described as "Draconian", the Briton dismissing claims that the FIA has essentially only slapped the Austrian team on the wrist.
"The more draconian part is the sporting penalty," said Horner, "which is a 10 percent reduction on our ability to utilise our wind tunnel and aerodynamic tools.
"I've heard people reporting today that that is an insignificant amount, but let me tell you that is an enormous amount," he insisted. "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. That 10 percent put into reality will have an impact on our ability to perform on track next year."
Not so, argues Mekies, who, like Zak Brown, Toto Wolff and Andreas Seidl, believes the world champions got off lightly.
"We have talked a lot in recent weeks about what one can do with half a million more, or a million or two or three," he told Sky Italia. "Two million is a significant amount and we have given our opinion several times on this topic.
"We at Ferrari think that this amount is worth around a couple of tenths per lap," he continued, "and so it's easy to understand that these figures can have a real impact on the outcome of the races, and maybe even a championship.
"As for the penalty, we are not happy with it, for two important reasons. The first is that we at Ferrari do not understand how the 10% reduction of the ATR can correspond to the same amount of lap time that we mentioned earlier. Furthermore, there is another problem in that. Since there is no cost cap reduction in the penalty, the basic effect is to push the competitor to spend the money elsewhere. It has total freedom to use the money it can no longer spend on use of the wind tunnel and CFD due to the 10% reduction, on reducing the weight of the car, or who knows what else.
"Our concern is that the combination of these two factors means the real effect of the penalty is very limited."
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