Red Bull Racing Fined for Violation of F1 Cost Cap

Red Bull Racing is in violation of the F1 budget cap for the 2021 campaign, the FIA said Friday.

The 2021 season, in which Red Bull's Max Verstappen won the world championship, is the first season in which the cost cap rules will apply, and all 10 F1 teams were required to submit documents detailing their spending during the season this March. As a result, only Red Bull was found to be in violation of the cap regulations.

However, the violations were minor, and according to the FIA, there was no indication that Red Bull had attempted to engage in "malicious, unfair, or fraudulent conduct."

The cost cap for 2021 was set at $145 million, which Red Bull was determined to have exceeded by 1.6%; the FIA also found that if Red Bull had correctly applied the notional tax credit in its submission, the cost cap exceedance would have been only 0.37%.

Given these factors, Red Bull ended up with a relatively minor penalty of a $7 million fine and a 10% reduction in the time allotted for wind tunnel testing and numerical fluid dynamics work.

Red Bull is not the only team to fall foul of cost-cap regulations. Earlier this year, Williams was fined $25,000 for late submission of paperwork.

The cost cap was introduced to equalize the playing field between big-budget teams and smaller teams; the cap was lowered to $140 million in 2022 and will be lowered again to $135 million from 2023 to 2025.