"Over is over" - Alpine boss says FIA's cost cap breach punishment for Red Bull is 'good one'

Alpine boss Otmar Szafneur reckons FIA's punishment for Red Bull's cost cap breach in 2021 was a 'good one', but it's now for the sport to move on.

The FIA have struck an Accepted Breach Agreement with Red Bull, who were given a $7 million for the breach for exceeding the permitted $145 million cost cap. They have also been asked to reduce aerodynamic testing allowance by 10% for the next 12 months. As per the FIA's aerodynamic development rules, Red Bull will only have 63% of the wind tunnel time compared to 75% and 80% for Ferrari and Mercedes.

Szafneur, though, told Sky Sports that the matter is now closed, saying that the punishment meted out is a 'good one'. He said:

They are marginally over from what I can tell by reading all the releases and listening to Christian (Horner), but over is over. If we are a half kilogram underweight on track, we are excluded from that particular race, so I believe the punishment is a good one. The process was followed. I’m happy both the FIA and Red Bull have come to their conclusion. They are happy to move forward, and so are we.”

Red Bull boss Christian Horner declined issuing any public apology for breaching the cost cap. However, Szafneur opted to steer clear of that and focus on the fact that there was a penalty doled out for the breach. He said:

“Say all we had was a public apology, would that have been good enough? I don’t think so. For me, it’s not about apologising, it’s about understanding. It’s about having the punishment fit the crime and moving forward. It will have an impact but not a huge impact. It’s more than 10 per cent between first and last already. We have a scale, so it’s not insignificant, but it’s not to the point where it punishes you too much.”

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We need to have a buffer in spends for budget cap - Alpine boss

The Alpine boss resonated a few things that Horner said when it came to the complexity involved in the entire process. Szafneur said that Alpine are keeping a buffer on the budget cap. He elaborated:

“The more refined your processes are, your accounting processes, the closer you can get to the cap and feel comfortable you haven’t missed anything that will put you over. However, if your processes aren’t very refined, if you don’t have that fidelity, then what you have to do is give yourself a big enough margin that if you did make a mistake, you don’t go over that. That’s exactly what we do."

The Alpine boss added:

“So as we go on in time, and we get more comfortable we’ll aim to be right on the cap, but today we are millions under just to have that buffer. We put in a buffer so we assure ourselves we are under. People make mistakes and you can make mistakes and it’s not malicious or it’s not intentional, but then to be able to sleep well at night, to say ‘we will be under’, we give ourselves that buffer, and I think maybe some of the other teams do the same.”

The Red Bull cost cap breach aside, Alpine have their championship battle to take care of this weekend at the Mexican GP. The French team are locked in a battle with McLaren for P4 in the championship and will hope to extend their lead with just three races to go.