Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari united in opposition to current F1 budget cap

Formula 1’s top three teams have shown a united front in speaking out against the sport’s current budget cap, with Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari chiefs all stressing the difficulty of sticking to the imposed limit.

Every F1 team is working with a cost cap of £119million this season, a move that is intended to ensure a more equal level of competition, but drastic inflation and a severe rise in freight costs have put teams at risk of exceeding that amount in expenditure.

“At the time we all agreed to those reductions, nobody could have predicted what was going on in the world and how that is driving inflation in every household globally,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports.

“We’re seeing it in Formula 1, we’re seeing it with logistics, we’re seeing it with energy costs. That to me is something the FIA need to take into account.

“They have the ability through force majeure to apply an inflationary effect because we don’t have enough levers to get down to the cap. I think that’s the same for probably seven of the teams in Formula 1.

“We’ve still got six months left this year, inflation still looks like it’s rising rather than diminishing, and hopefully the FIA will act shortly.”

Ferrari chief Mattia Binotto agreed, saying: “I think that there will be no way for us to stay below. So, I’m pretty sure that at some stage we will go over.

“In the regulations, there is a threshold, which is 5 per cent. If you do not exceed the 5 per cent, on the top of what’s the budget-cap threshold, it will be considered a minor breach. And what’s a minor breach in case of force majeure? What will the stewards and the FIA decide on that in terms of penalties?

“No idea, but I don’t think there is any way for us – and for many teams – simply to stay within. Even laying off people, I don’t think that’s a good and right choice.”

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Toto Wolff, team prinicipal at Mercedes, shared the opinion of Horner and Binotto, saying: “The cost cap was introduced for specific purposes, to allow the small teams to spend the same amount as the big ones. There shouldn’t be a bargaining every year to lift the cost cap up.

“But I think we’re facing an exceptional situation in that we have a real inflation that is north of 7 per cent at the moment. Our energy prices in Brackley have tripled, our freight costs have tripled.

“I think that is something that needs to be considered because we want to avoid any circumstance, reorganising restructuring the big teams again in a way that would be really damaging for us as a team and as an industry.

“This is a force majeure situation; having a raging war in the Ukraine and the consequences that it had on energy prices is not something anybody could have foreseen.

“There needs to be some sort of compromise for the teams that are against an inflationary adjustment and the teams that are for it.”

Red Bull lead the constructors’ standings after seven races, with Ferrari second and Mercedes third.

In the drivers’ championship, last year’s title winner Max Verstappen is out in front, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc trails the Red Bull man, whose teammate Sergio Perez sits third.