Red Bull principal Christian Horner ‘begrudgingly’ accepts ‘draconian’ penalties for exceeding F1 spending cap

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has accepted his team’s punishments for going over their spending cap while describing their penalty as ‘draconian’.

With the end of the season closing in, F1’s regulatory body declared that two teams had gone over the limits for the previous campaign.

Rival team Mercedes and others in the sport had complained that they had exceeded their allowance, which led to a war of words between Horner and other figures in the sport, claiming that family members of Red Bull’s staff had been bullied because of the accusations.

On Friday the punishment for the Austrian team was revealed, with a $7 million fine as well as a 10% reduction on what the team can spend on aerodynamics.

Speaking ahead of the season’s third-last Grand Prix, in Mexico this weekend, Horner explained why he had decided to accept the penalties rather than appeal them.

He said: “Why have we accepted it? Had we dragged it out through the administration process, that could have taken months and beyond that the ICA could have taken further months. We could have been looking at a 12-month period to have this closed.

“And the amount of speculation and sniping that has been going on, we felt it was in everyone’s interests to close the book.

“We accept the penalties – begrudgingly, but we accept them.”

He continued, complaining about the size of the scale of the punishments.

“$7m is an enormous amount of money and the more draconian part is the sporting penalty which is a 10% reduction in our ability to use our wind tunnel and aerodynamic tools. That represents between 0.25secs and 0.5secs of lap time.

“By winning the constructors’ championship, we become victims of our own success by having a 5% incremental handicap compared to second and third places, so we will have 15% less than second, and 20% less than third.

“That will have an impact on our ability to perform on track.”

Red Bull have enjoyed back-to-back success, with the 2022 campaign already seeing them win the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.