Rivals want harsher penalties for Red Bull as long as 'the shoe is not on their foot', says former F1 driver

Former Red Bull driver David Coulthard says that there's a reason why rival teams have been asking for harsher penalties for the Milton Keynes squad.

The former Red Bull driver who has driven for and won races with McLaren as well said that the plea for a harsher penalty was nothing more than a political stunt by the teams.

Talking to Channel 4, Coulthard tried to make sense of the comments made by other teams about the harshness of the Red Bull penalty. He said:

“Let’s say McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes all over the cost cap next year because they’re willing to take a 10% reduction. They won’t do it because 10% is 10% – nobody wants a 10% reduction. So of course, they’re going to say that because the shoe is not on their foot. But as sure as they are in Formula 1, there’ll be something that’s controversial about their team in the future, as we’ve seen with Ferrari."

Referring to the Spygate where McLaren were fined $100 million, Coulthard said that these kind of things can happen with any team. He said:

“McLaren had a $100 million fine for having Ferrari designs (following the 2007 ‘Spygate’ scandal) – we forget that happened in the past. So I think it’s just the political nature of Formula 1 that the teams are going to say that ‘we’re all burned by the referee, whether we like it or not’. The referee is the FIA, they’ve spoken; that’s the end of it.”

Red Bull were fined $7 million and a 10% reduction in wind tunnel time for 2023 for breaching the 2021 cost cap by 1.6% ($2.15 million).

---

Red Bull penalty is harsh enough - David Coulthard

Coulthard talked about how the F1 world is now an aerodynamic formula and every small margin is important.

Every tenth makes a huge difference in F1 these days. Considering the same, Coulthard reckons the penalty for Red Bull is apt for their transgressions. He said:

"Formula 1 is an aerodynamic formula, ‘aero is king’ is the sort of strap line up and down here. So if you have a reduction in the amount of time that you can spend in the wind tunnel developing your package, of course, if you start with a great package, and you’re already quicker than the others, then that may not affect you as much."

He continued:

"If you look at the rate of development that teams have from the beginning of the season to the end, a car that wins the first Grand Prix undeveloped would struggle to make the top 10 come the end of the year."

He added:

"So that is actually, I think, quite a harsh penalty, but it’s obviously one that’s been agreed upon between the FIA and Red Bull, but it’s quite nice to know what the penalty is because we still don’t know what the Ferrari penalty was for when they were fined privately behind closed doors a couple of years ago for something to do with the engine. So at least we’ve got transparency.”

The penalty could hit Red Bull hard, as they were already going to have a reduced wind tunnel time because of their position (first) in the championship. It will be interesting to see how they respond to the drop in development time.