Has Red Bull's cost cap breach helped in its current domination over the grid? F1 pundit speculates

F1 pundit Edd Straw does not believe that Red Bull's cost cap breach has been a factor in the team's dominant run in the sport. The Austrian team was found to be in breach of its budget cap by about $400,000 for the 2021 F1 season. As a result, it faces a 10% reduction in its allotted development time for the 2023 season.

However, the penalty and the organic reduction in development time because the team won the title last season (the highest-placed team gets the least time), has not deterred Red Bull from continuing its domination over the grid in 2023. Red Bull has won all seven races this season and unless misfortune strikes, it is likely to win most of the remaining races as well.

Edd Straw does not think that the cost cap breach has helped the team achieve this dominance over the grid. He said on The Race's recent podcast:

“I’m not going to make excuses for them [Red Bull] breaching the cap, they were banged to rights on it. The cost cap overspend was £1.8million however that was based on them declaring some tax break stuff that they shouldn’t have so as the FIA stated the effective overspend was just over 400,000."

Straw added:

“Now that clearly was something they shouldn’t have done but it absolutely doesn’t add up to this advantage. This advantage is earned through being a phenomenally good team and also they retain that desire to always improve. They’re never resting on their laurels and getting complacent about how well they’re doing.”

"I’d be surprised if Mercedes do enough to be at Red Bull level at the start of next year": Edd Straw

Straw also speculated that, since Mercedes has just adopted a concept similar to the Austrian team, it might be difficult for the German team to catch up to their rivals. He believes that because Red Bull is more familiar with their design, they will remain one step ahead of the Silver Arrows. He said:

"Teams are now much better at getting the most out of their cars, there’s less fluctuation, less variables which does lead to this potential for pulverizing dominance and just the problem of how long it takes to recover."

Straw added:

"Mercedes has brought upgrades recently and set a new design direction but we’re talking about ‘well, start of next year they can do a new car’ and can maybe take a step, but even then I’d be surprised if Mercedes do enough to be at Red Bull level at the start of next year because you’re trying to catch up so much, while all the time Red Bull are serenely carrying on the same development path that they started on."

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future, although it's safe to say that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finishing on the podium in Spain would have raised the hopes at Mercedes.