According to Horner, the penalty on Red Bull “significantly limits” the development
Red Bull has been sanctioned for exceeding the budget cap. In addition to a financial penalty, the reigning world champion team has received a 10% reduction in wind tunnel time. According to Christian Horner, this is a real handicap.
Interviewed by RACER media, Horner mentions the reduction in their wind tunnel testing time, which slows down car development since performance is now primarily aerodynamic.
She significantly limits the number of hours [editor’s note: penalty] that we can spend in our wind tunnel each quarter. And I believe that the team needs to adapt to this. And this simply means that we need to be a bit more focused and disciplined in what we submit to the testing process in the wind tunnel or in our simulation tools. So it’s another challenge. And it’s definitely a handicap.
Despite the penalty he has to deal with, Horner welcomes the establishment of the budget cap. According to him, this prevents wasting by constructing too many spare parts that will ultimately never be used.
« I think the principle is great and it has helped improve efficiency. If I look at the activity today, compared to what it was four or five years ago, we would have ended up with a large stock of brand new spare parts that would never have been used, and that would have become nothing but waste. Nowadays, we can no longer afford that. We need to be very efficient and effective. » he emphasizes.
This regulation has only been in place for two years, so the boss of Red Bull still hopes for some further developments to make it fairer, especially regarding the differences in price for parts.
At the moment, we observe a gap between the financial rules for the chassis and those for the engines. On the chassis side, they can have a Christmas party, while on the engines side, they cannot! So there are certain things that, in my opinion, need to be balanced for there to be consistency between these caps, he adds.
