Last year, FIA found Red Bull guilty of breaching the cost cap for the 2020 season and consequently punished them. The sanctions included a $7 million fine and a 10% reduction in wind tunnel time. While team boss Christian Horner felt the punishment was “draconian” many felt the Austrian team got away with a slap on the wrist. Surprisingly, Frederic Vasseur, the then-Alfa Romeo boss, did not join the rivals’ chorus. However, now that his current team Ferrari is struggling to match the reigning champions’ pace, the Frenchman is up in arms over the apparent lacking intensity of the sanctions. His delayed response to the issue begs the question, is he trying to avoid accountability while his team continues to struggle?

Red Bull were found guilty of overspending over $400,000 for the 2021 season. However, their failure to report the tax receipts worth $1.4 million correctly inflated the breach figure to around $2.2 million. Despite the sanctions, however, Red Bull continued their dominant run from last year.

Is Frederic Vasseur escaping responsibility by shifting the blame to Red Bull?

The question remains, would Vasseur have questioned the sanctions if his team won 2 races from the first 3 fixtures as they did last year? In a recent episode of The Last Lap Podcast, co-hosts Tom McCluskey and Niran, and guest Aldas replied negatively. Aldas said, “It’s sour grapes!”

“When you look at the gap Red Bull have over everyone else, by the way, that isn’t an excuse, let me just clarify that. That was wrong by Red Bull. I think they got off actually a bit lightly. They were messing around during the first year of the cost cap which collapses the entire point of the sport. But, the gap we’re seeing now is not 400k’s worth overspend. It’s purely that Ferrari are struggling, their drivers are having a howler, their car is clearly the ceiling of where their car is even if they do develop it more, it is nowhere near the Red Bull,” he added.

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Clearly, Vasseur does not think so. He lauded Red Bull for putting together an impressive car. But he felt the 10% reduction of wind tunnel time was just not enough.

Vasseur believes the penalty was not severe

FIA, in an attempt to level the playing field, has introduced many measures in recent years. Those include the cost cap, the new ground-effect regulations, and, of course, the wind tunnel time distribution. The lower a team finishes in the standings in the previous year, the more time they have in the wind tunnel. And because Red Bull are the defending champions, they have the least minutes for aerodynamic testing. Couple that with the 10% reduction penalty and they have even less time in the tunnel.

Giving his opinion on the penalty recently, Racer.com quoted Fred Vasseur as saying, “The penalty for me was very low. If you consider that basically we will improve a bit less than a second over the season in terms of aero, you get a penalty of 10% of this it’s one-tenth and as it’s not a linear progression it’s probably less. And you are allowed to spend this money somewhere else, so it means for me the penalty is marginal.”

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Given that the FIA announced the penalties in October last year, it would be plausible to think that the team was perhaps almost done with its 2023 car. Then would the effect of the penalty show itself in their next year’s car? Or have the reigning champions pulled so far ahead of the competition that it wouldn’t matter much?