Mercedes and Ferrari suggest Red Bull’s Formula 1 budget cap penalty for breaching rules is not enough

The FIA revealed Red Bull overspent by £1.86m last year and interpreted 13 points of the budget cap regulations incorrectly, including the cost of power units, catering and staff wages.

Horner has claimed it will cost Red Bull between 0.25 and 0.5 seconds.

“The scale of that penalty isn’t much more than what you would lose if you were just one place higher up in the championship,” Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin told the press.

“I think describing it as draconian is an exaggeration.

“Reducing the number of runs does limit your freedom when you’re developing your concept, but we’re in reasonably well-explored regulations now. But you definitely have to be more efficient about it.

“If it were half a second, which I’ve heard mentioned, then the team at the back of the grid would have a three-seconds advantage to one at the front and that simply isn’t the case. But it depends on how well you make decisions during the year.

“I would have thought a tenth, or a bit more than a tenth, maybe two-tenths is realistically what that will cost you.”

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has also expressed his displeasure at the penalty, stating that Red Bull should stop telling “fairytales”.

Ferrari racing director Laurent Mekies feels the punishment is on the lenient side and was particularly unhappy that the £6.07m fine is separate to Red Bull’s budget cap spend.

“We certainly think it’s low,” said Mekies. “We don’t see it on the same scale as to be able to compensate the overspending that was done. Especially combined with the fact that the penalty is not combined with any budget cap reductions for them.

“So we say altogether what will remain of the real impact of the penalty will probably be very small.”