Mercedes say Red Bull are ‘exaggerating’ impact of their F1 cost cap breach penalty
Addressing their punishment from the FIA ahead of the 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Mexico City Grand Prix on Friday, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner labelled their accepted 10 percent reduction of aerodynamic testing time for the next 12 months as 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:“draconian” and “enormous”.
Horner also claimed that Red Bull would lose up to half a second in laptime&n𒀰bsp;next season as a result of their sporting penalty for exceeding the $145m spending limit in 202🅷1.
But Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin countered Ho๊rner’s estimation, saying “maybe two-tenths at🍸 the upper end” is a more realistic figure.
“The scale of that penalty isn’t much more than w�🐲�hat you would lose if you are just one place higher up in the championship,” Shovlin said during the Saturday press conferences.
“It’s not as big ꦓas the penalty if you are positioned two places higher. So I think describing it as draconian is an♚ exaggeration.
“Reducing the number of runs does limit your freedom in developing a concept🍨, but we’re in reasonably well explored regulations now.
“You definitely need to be more efficient but if it were half a second, which I’d heard mentioned, then a team at the bac𒉰k of the grid would have over a three-second advantage to one at the front and that simply isn’t the case.
“But it depends how well you make decisions ๊during the year. I would have thought a tenth or a bit more than a tenth, maybe two tenths at the upper end is realistically what that would cost you.”
Shovlin added: “Where it would be costly is if you’ve chosen an incorrect✱ concept and you need to backtrack, it’s removing that freedom to explore different avenues.”
Red Bul🌼l’s overspend breach of relevant costs adjusted by the FIA was £1.86m but the governing body acknowledged that if a tax credit had been correctly applied, the team’s overspend would have only been £432,652.
Asked what such a figure would equate to in terms of development and laptime gains, Shovlin said: “From an engineers point of view, day in and day out we’re making decis☂ions of what we don’t do, that are at the orders of one, two or three thousand pounds. That’s a normal part of our jobs.
“We know what we spend versus what is it going to give us. We simply don’t have enough money, you’ve got to c🐻hoose where it goes very carefully.&nbs𓃲p;
"It’s very difficult to put a lap time on it but the reality is that money buys performa🦩nce. In terms of an upgrade kit that could easily be a major update kit.
“The teams are getting more efficient at doing upgrade kits for less money, recycling parts -&nꦗbsp;I’m sure we are not alone in that - and it is quite a constraint.
“So🐻 whether the overspend is completely mitigated by the penalty, to be honest it depends how efficiently they develop going forward.”
Red Bull's 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen is on pole in Mexico ahead of 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:George Russell and 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilton.
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for ltxcn.top around the world. Often reporti💧ng on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
