“Red Bull was the only team that exceeded the budget cap”: Ferrari boss insists Christian Horner’s team overspending changed the result of the Championship

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto joined the list of team principals to speak out against FIA’s penalty given to Red Bull, insisting that it’s too lenient. 

Red Bull exceeding the budget cap has been the most talked about topic within the F1 community over the last few weeks. The biggest question was how they were going to be penalized, with people suggesting that the Austrian team could be looking at a points deduction.

However, earlier this week, the FIA revealed that Red Bull will have to pay a fine of $7 million and get a 10% reduction in their wind tunnel time. This in itself is a big punishment that fans are underestimating as Karun Chandhok described. Regardless, almost all teams feel that Red Bull should have been given a bigger punishment.

Accepted Breach Agreement between Red Bull Racing Team and the FIA for Breach of the 2021 FIA Formula One Financial Regulationshttps://t.co/vDsMU7qrp8

— FIA (@fia) October 28, 2022

The fact that they overspent by $2 million means that they could invest more in the development of RB18. This is according to Mattia Binotto, who like others feel that the Milton-Keynes outfit got off easy.

Also read: Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton sent messages of support to Daniel Ricciardo after McLaren axed him

Ferrari could have challenged for World Championship if Red Bull hadn’t overspent

Ferrari was the team to watch out for at the beginning of the season. They started 2022 with two wins in the first three races, but reliability problems along with strategy goof-ups saw them lose huge points.

Despite their issues, Binotto feels that if Red Bull didn’t overspend by that much, they would still be in the mix. On top of that, he is adamant that the money they use for wind tunnel will be spent elsewhere next season.

“Red Bull was the only team that exceeded the budget cap,” he said. “They were 2 million over, so about 2 tenths/lap. This could have changed the result of the championship.”

Also read: “We had to kick Sebastian Vettel out of the office”: Aston Martin boss reveals how committed 4-time World Champion is to ending F1 career strongly

Disastrous qualifying session for Ferrari drivers at Mexican GP

Ferrari has been inferior to Red Bull in terms of performance for the vast majority of the season. However, coming into a qualifying session, they were always favorites to challenge for the pole. Most fans expected the fight for P1 to be between Red Bull and Ferrari in Mexico as well.

🚨| Ferrari had to run the engine at low power in qualifying to protect the turbochargers at high altitude in Mexico.

Hence, Ferrari has to run with lower downforce, causing sliding, overheating tyres and poor balance.

Ferrari will aim to finish the race with both cars.

— Ferrari News 🐎 (@FanaticsFerrari) October 30, 2022

To everyone’s surprise, the two Ferrari drivers were so off pace that they ended up qualifying P5 and P7 respectively. Charles Leclerc, who will start the race from P7, revealed that there is some problem with the engine. The F1-75 was struggling with pace on the main straight.

Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz will be hoping that their car finds some race pace on Sunday as they look to fight their way up the field.