Red Bull rubbishes budget discrepancies suggestions
By Jonathan Noble
Thursday, September 22nd 2011, 16:35 GMT
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has rubbished fresh suggestions that his team breached the Resource Restriction Agreement last year, ahead of moves aimed at easing tensions between outfits about the scope of Formula 1's budget cap.
A recent audit of the activities of a selection of teams by Dutch consultancy firm Capgemini prompted media reports that discrepancies had been found at Red Bull Racing - on the back of the outfit asking for clarification about certain elements of the investigation.
Speaking in Singapore on Thursday, Horner dismissed talk that there was any issue over the amount of money Red Bull Racing spent - and said the team's 2010 budget had been signed off as under the RRA limits.
"It's false, absolutely false," said Horner when asked about the reports on Red Bull Racing breaking the RRA. "We agreed the scope, we worked within the scope. Job done!
"We've worked within the RRA, within the regulations that exist. It saved us money, saved the teams money. Unfortunately the consequence of success is people will throw stones."
Despite Capgemini's report having given the outfits it looked at – believed to be McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes GP, Red Bull Racing and Sauber – the all-clear, AUTOSPORT understands that there are issues relating to the scope of the RRA that still need sorting however.
Sources suggest that the key issues being looked at include the monitoring of wind tunnel time, the use of manufacturer resources for those teams owned by car makers, and how to ensure secret data is not made available to other outfits through any audit investigation.
Horner said: "The RRA still needs to be dealt with going forward. There are some fundamental issues that need dealing with in it. But overall we feel it's a good thing."
Sauber CEO Monisha Kaltenborn said that the matter was going to be dealt with in forthcoming meetings at FOTA.
"What Capgemini did was a benchmark study, looking at methodologies and how they are used," she said. "We were not in any way trying to verify the abiding of the RRA, that was not its mandate.
"It was to see how you interpret the rules and how you use them. The moment you write something in a contract it is always open to interpretation and that is what the idea to it was.
"That study has been completed. It has submitted a report, and according to our rules it is now up to the chairman of FOTA to assess that, and share it with us.
"As we understand, there are maybe one or two issues there that we shall discuss within FOTA, once we have been presented with the issues."
Credit: AUTOSPORT.COM (www.autosport.com)
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