Ferrari will present a sheet to the FIA detailing what they believe are every team’s expenses in the opening rounds of 2022, including the costs incurred by Red Bull’s major upgrades.
The raft of new technical regulations this season included the re-introduction of ground effect aerodynamics as well as a new $140 million budget cap.
This has to be spread between development of the cars, damage repairs, travel, freight and more and, with the evolution of the cars more complex than ever, the $5 million less that the teams have to work with compared to last season may start to run a little thin.
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A lot of the upgrades will be aimed at making the cars lighted in a bid to adhere to the 798kg weight limit this season, and with a tight stringency on money, Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto preciously asked the FIA to keep close tabs on everyone’s spending.
“The competition front shifts from now onwards: when you have two cars as similar in performance as Ferrari and Red Bull, each package will weigh because a tenth or two will make a difference at this point in the season,” he said.
“There is a cap budget on which we are limited and I am insisting every day with the FIA or them to carry out the checks, because if these do not happen we risk to somehow offset the final result.”
FIA head of single seaters technical matters, Nikolas Tombazis, responded by assuring the Italian that the governing body has “tax experts” who will not allow any financial trickery to slip underneath them.
“Our first objective is to ensure that the championship is clean, we want those who deserve it to win,” he explained.
“Today’s regulations require much more control resources: now we have to inspect what teams do at home as well.
“But for financial controls we have a capable team led by colleague Federico Lodi. Mattia can rest assured, we are doing everything to keep the situation under control.
“We have tax experts who check the balance sheets and the parts that are mounted on the machines to make sure we are billed correctly.”
Ferrari are now going to give the FIA a detailed list of how much each team has spent in the first ew rounds according to the governing body’s list of how much each upgrade should cost, according to a report by Formu1a.uno.
This is not to be misinterpreted as a dig at Red Bull, but rather an assistance to the FIA to help them correlate everyone’s expenditure and refine how the spending is monitored.
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Binotto has recently theorised that Red Bull will eventually have to “stop developing” due to the money they have already spent on development this season.
It now appears that Red Bull have only spent just over $6 million of their estimated $36 million development allowance in 2022, and Dr Helmut Marko’s retort came in the form of an observation of Carlos Sainz’s crashes, which he said “can’t be cheap.”