Amidst Overspending in Cost Cap, Red Bull Still Gave $300,000 to an Employee Absent from Work for a Year

Tanish Chachra | 29/05/2023
Amidst Overspending in Cost Cap, Red Bull Still Gave $300,000 to an Employee Absent from Work for a Year

Last year, when Red Bull was found guilty of breaching the 2021 cost cap by $2.6 million, they reportedly exceeded their budget from multiple sources. However, as per Business F1, it’s believed that the world champions’ overspending had several expenditures detected by the FIA, which were unrelated to their performance on the track. According to the report, Red Bull paid a salary to one of the employees who was absent from work for almost a year.

Apparently, the team member who apparently was on sick leave for over a year due to severe illness. Yet, Red Bull didn’t remove the person from the payroll.

Though the person’s identity hasn’t been revealed, it’s been disclosed by Business F1 that the person apparently held the position of the Chief Operating Officer once.

How Red Bull Made a grave error with its accounts

Despite the long absence due to illness, Red Bull didn’t keep the said employee off the books for the year on compassionate grounds. Thus, it also made a huge dent in their accounts which eventually led to them overspending in 2021. The team thought that her salary was off the cost cap, but the FIA’s auditors initially didn’t think so.

“Her salary was deemed to be outside according to the team but not the FIA auditors. The discrepancy (unconfirmed) was originally believed to be $300,000,” states Business F1 in its November 2022 edition.

Red Bull was accused of spending $2.6 million over the limit when this amount was included. However, the F1 team raised six spends listed by FIA auditors, which were not race related, and the salary given to this particular employee was one of them. In the end, FIA duly noted these points along with several disputes raised by Red Bull, and from $2.6 million, they reduced their overspending to $400,000.

Did the penalty affect the world champions?

In the end, Red Bull was indeed found to be breaching the cost cap but in the minor bracket. However, they got heavily penalized as they had to pay a fine of $7 million, and 10% of their wind-tunnel time was deducted.

Yet, it didn’t stop the Milton-Keynes-based outfit from being the best side this season. In the first six races of the season, the Christian Horner-led team has won all the races, with Max Verstappen securing four wins and Sergio Perez with two wins.

Seeing their form, it doesn’t seem like any of the team’s rivals would be able to get close to them. Thus, it doesn’t seem like the cost cap punishment affected the team. Rather, they are better than ever.

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Red Bull

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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