Red Bull F1 Designer Adrian Newey Sounds Off the Alarm Bells With the Budget Cap

The 2021 season saw the introduction of a budget cap set at 145 million dollars for this year. It will attempt to ensure that teams maximize their resources without overspending. However, the Chief Technical Officer at Red Bull, Adrian Newey, has one concern and that is teams finding gray areas in the budget, and would be content with it if it is equal for everyone.

Newey hoped that a budget cap wouldn’t be introduced, as an alternative option was there. Nevertheless, he hopes to overcome with maximizing whatever resources the Milton-Keynes-based outfit has to offer.

Red Bull’s Adrian Newey suggests a ‘few gray areas’ in the budget cap

Every team on the grid does their best to exploit whatever gray area they can to get the best results. So it shouldn’t be a surprise if they do the same with this year’s budget cap. Hence, Newey hopes that no one can exploit and the rules remain the same for everyone.

Speaking to Michael Schmidt in an exclusive interview with Auto Motor Und Sport. The British engineer said, “If the budget cap can be monitored safely and equally for everyone, then I have no problem with it. But I still see a few gray areas and that worries me. As an engineer, I like to be creative with the tools that are available to me. If there are fewer, no problem. “

“There would also have been an alternative to budget capping. I think it would be better if the possibilities of development work were restricted. Today this is mainly determined by aerodynamics. If one were to be even more restrictive with tools like the wind tunnel or CFD, that would severely restrict development capacities and one would not have to employ hordes of aerodynamicists.”

“That would result in less output and thus less burden on the design office and the production department. A token system could then be introduced to limit the number of changes. Such a system would likely be more effective. But, as I said: I can live with the budget cap as long as it is the same for everyone,” Newey concluded. (Translated from German via Google)

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Horner shares his thoughts on the budget cap

When the budget cap was announced, it created many obstacles for the teams on the grid. However, Team Principal, Christian Horner feels that it won’t affect how competitive they are during a Grand Prix weekend.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Horner said, “I’ve taken a holistic view of this, and I believe the cream will always rise to the top at the end of the day. So whatever the regulations are, it’s down to us to adapt to ensure that we’re as competitive as we can be.”

“It’s something we’ve been successful at doing over the years and we’ll have to apply that again with this set of technical sporting and financial regs,” he concluded.

As of now, Red Bull sits in second place in the constructor’s standings behind arch-rivals, Mercedes. They hope to maximize their resources keeping in mind the cost cap and take the battle to the Silver Arrows in the second half of the season.

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