Craig Scarborough, a well-known technical analyst, believes that Red Bull’s punishment for exceeding Formula One’s budget cap will have a significant impact on the team’s growth in the coming years.
During Max Verstappen’s 2021 title-winning season, it was discovered that Red Bull had spent £1.86 million more than the F1 budget cap
. In October, the team entered into an “accepted breach agreement” with the governing body, the FIA.
Red Bull was penalized by the agreement with a fine in the range of £6 million and a 10% reduction in aerodynamic research for 2023.
Christian Horner, the team’s principal, estimated that Red Bull could lose up to 0.5 seconds of lap time as a result of the sporting penalty, but some people believe that the penalty is too light.
Scarborough stated to the Twitch channel of F1 journalist Peter Windsor that he is of the opinion that the shorter amount of time spent in the wind tunnel will force Red Bull to make difficult choices regarding the development of a chassis for the 2024 and the 2023 car.
“evolve depending on how good the car in 2023 is, how much competition they have, and how much they want to think about ’24,” according to the report.
With the Championship-winning RB18 car, Red Bull has won 17 out of 22 races under the new rules for 2022, and the team appears well-positioned to handle the shorter development time.
However, Scarborough believes that the full force of the cost cap punishment will be felt as the regulations.
mature and teams focus on the finer details in their search for improvements, despite the team’s flawless start to the new era of Formula One.
That is a significant loss for them.The development curve has been very steep during the first year of the regulations, but it will start to flatten out during the following year as teams make their second attempt at the regulations and develop them throughout the year.
However, as Red Bull pushed Mercedes and Hamilton all the way to the finish line in Abu Dhabi, the engineers were concerned that their pursuit of the 2021 Drivers’ Championship would hurt their performance in the following season.
In an effort to gain an advantage over Mercedes ahead of the crucial final races of the season, Christian Horner’s team spent a lot of time working on the 2021 Red Bull vehicle.However, there was a concern that their perseverance, which resulted in Verstappen winning his first title in 2021, might compromise their ability to compete in 2022.
Red Bull was forced to respond to seven-time champion Hamilton’s brilliance as the Brit took Verstappen to the wire for the drivers’ title, which cost them valuable time in the development of their RB18 car.
However, Red Bull even surpassed their own expectations with the RB18, whose performance levels increased throughout the season in a dream year that saw Verstappen win 15 races.
Red Bull engineer Pierre Wache disclosed, “It was developed in a very short period of time, which is one of the reasons why it’s quite heavy.”We didn’t start late, but what happened last season compromised the resources we put into this car code.I believe that the primary compromise consisted more of a human resource and wind tunnel time.