Toto Wolff and Zak Brown will keep on 'punching' Red Bull over cost cap breach even after penalty, feels F1 pundit

Former F1 driver turned pundit Martin Brundle has warned Red Bull of future verbal attacks post their cost cap breach. The reporter made it clear that Mercedes and McLaren CEOs Toto Wolff and Zak Brown will not let this go.

While speaking to Sky Sports, the former F1 driver presented his views on Red Bull's breach and penalty:

“Christian and Red Bull are on the ropes over this and I fully expect Toto and Zak and others to keep punching, because they have them on the ropes. That’s the nature of this little crucible we live in.”

Brundle also agreed with several team principals and claimed that a “breach is a breach” and Red Bull's spending was not exactly "minor":

“Minor breach is wrong because everybody is super-upset about £432,000. A minor breach goes up to $7.25million, a full year’s development budget – it clearly makes no sense. A breach is a breach. There should be a rounding number, $100,000-200,000 maximum and then you have to justify it. It has to be the way, otherwise the terminology suggests it is not very serious."

Red Bull received a 10 percent reduction in their wind tunnel time and a $7m fine as their penalty. The team only accepted it after days of negotiations but still referred to it as 'draconian'.

Several teams, however, believe that although the penalty will hurt Red Bull, sanctions need to be stricter next time.

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Ferrari raises doubts regarding Red Bull's cost cap penalty

Ferrari sporting chief Laurent Mekies pointed out two major flaws with their rivals' cost cap punishment. While speaking to Sky Italia, Mekies announced that the team is not convinced if the Austrian outfit's punishment is adequate.

He told the outlet:

“As for the penalty, we are not happy with it, for two important reasons. The first is that we at Ferrari do not understand how the 10% reduction of the ATR can correspond to the same amount of lap time that we mentioned earlier.”

“Furthermore, there is another problem in that. Since there is no cost cap reduction in the penalty, the basic effect is to push the competitor to spend the money elsewhere. It has total freedom to use the money it can no longer spend on use of the wind tunnel and CFD due to the 10% reduction, on reducing the weight of the car, or who knows what else. Our concern is that the combination of these two factors means the real effect of the penalty is very limited.”

The Milton-Keynes-based team claims that it will suffer next year. Team boss Horner stated that the penalty could reduce the car's laptime by 0.25 to 0.5 seconds. The rival camps, however, are convinced that the outfit will bounce back immediately from this.