Year After Exposing Red Bull’s $2.2 Million Crimes, FIA Rules Out “Illicit Tactics” on AlphaTauri Misuse Allegations

The rivals of Red Bull and AlphaTauri recently voiced their concern about the two teams owned by the same group. They believe that the two Red Bull-owned teams can team up and exploit the budget cap restrictions. However, according to Nikolas Tombazis, FIA’s single-seater director, there have been no signs of such occurrence.

Speaking about this, Tombazis said, as per The Race, “We haven’t seen anything [Illicit tactics] in AlphaTauri that is concerning us.” He also added, “We [FIA] don’t think there’s any direct sign of collaboration [between Red Bull and AlphaTauri.]

This has come after Red Bull was caught overspending $2.2 million in the budget cap for the 2021 F1 season. The Austrian team got themselves into huge controversies and troubles. In the end, FIA slammed them with a $7 million fine and a 10% reduction in wind tunnel time.

This wasn’t something Christian Horner appreciated very much as he went off to call the penalty “draconian.” However, the rivals were still unsatisfied with the punishment as they believed that it did not trouble the defending champions much. Surprisingly, Mercedes Toto Wolff found the punishment befitting as he stated that the issue caused “reputational damage“ to the team.

Was the cost cap punishment a big issue for Red Bull?

The cost cap punishment did not have a great impact on Red Bull in the 2023 F1 season. It would be fair to say that it had just a minimal impact, and as a result, the Milton-Keynes-based team came out as a more dominant force this season, as compared to their 2022 outing.

From raking in 21 wins in 22 races to having 15 back-to-back wins, Adrian Newey’s team looked unstoppable. Apart from the sole win by Ferrari in Singapore, the entire F1 grid had no answer to Max Verstappen’s onslaught.

Amazing to come home to a factory full of Champions Thank you everyone @redbullracing for making such an incredible season possible pic.twitter.com/b5lfEL7BvU

— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) December 14, 2023

The dominance was so severe that they broke McLaren’s near-perfect record of the 1988 season, where they won almost all the races except one. Furthermore, the Milton-Keynes-based outfit also took 1-2 in the Drivers’ championship for the first time in their history.

As for Verstappen, he took 10 back-to-back wins, broke Sebastian Vettel’s 13 GP wins record, and set a record of 19 GP wins in a single season. As things stand, Verstappen and Red Bull are unlikely to be removed from the top in the 2024 F1 season as well, given how massive their advantage is.