2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Farnborough]

I'm of course offering gentle speculation.

It would seem injudicious of them (but possible) to shoot themselves in the foot from RB team personnel making statements about performance so far.

They absolutely must know of the boundary in regards to accounting for this in/out of cost cap limitation.

Hypothetical projection, if there were three engine in pool, one with more extensive lifing used, with the other two expected to reach their limits by last race. The "oldest" could be ascribed FP and maybe sprint duties to conserve the other two.
It could look like you can make reasonable arguments in either direction for replacement on one unit on "ultimately" reliability ticket.

They all must look at them in this way, that's all teams, to minimise risk of failure.

How hard do you run a unit at end of projected mileage, how brave are you in that confidence, even though "on the book" it says it SHOULD make it at that deployment rate. Still that's reliability in purest sense, but a little obscure in absolute definition. But then that does define much of these cars in absolute terms, knowing the boundary and just how close you can run to it.

Here it seems, just the words used to describe how you've acted can "blend" it to either side of the cost cap boundary.

[Wouter]

Max is still in Milton Keynes at the factory according to his plane at Cranfield Airport.

[Sergej]

Preparing a shi*ty setup for Vegas ?

[AR3-GP]

Across the grid engines are not considered in the cost cap and red bull have been silent on the issue,

This is not true. Teams are allowed to exclude 15 million euros of Power unit cost. The rules have been the same since 2022. It means that PU cost become reportable after exceeding 15 million euros of expenses. There is no unlimited PUs excluded from the cap rule. There is no distinction in the financial regulations for taking extra PUs for reliability or performance. There is also no proof that anyone has ever breached 15 million euros and continued to exclude PU cost due to reliability.

So in any case, we don't know how much Red Bull has spent on PUs before Max took one in Brazil. If they were still under 15 million euros, then it remains excluded no matter if it's for reliability or performance. There isn't any exclusion in the cost cap for taking a PU due to reliability either...and we're up to 2 pages of misunderstandings because of Andrea Stella's deliberate aspersion casting. Like I said, Stella is full of it. The fact that Yuki didn't have many more PUs with all his bad qualifyings already answers the question. You can't take unlimited PUs. Every PU counts against what you can excluded, and therefore what must be reported above 15 million euros.

[Farnborough]

Looks like someone over in the orange team maybe "puckering" up over their own mileage in run out to seasons end

This last fitment (whatever its status here) looks to have set their minds into a skid.

[CjC]

So Stella isn’t full of BS.
He’s brought up a legitimate point that needs to be discussed.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mcla ... ommission/

[Quantum]

So Stella isn’t full of BS.
He’s brought up a legitimate point that needs to be discussed.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mcla ... ommission/

It really is a legitimate point.
Either Red Bull broke the budget cap, and will have to accept the consequences of that.
Or McLaren can utilise the performance advantage of having an extra engine for both their drivers by doing the same thing.

[Wouter]

So Stella isn’t full of BS.
He’s brought up a legitimate point that needs to be discussed.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mcla ... ommission/

It really is a legitimate point.
Either Red Bull broke the budget cap, and will have to accept the consequences of that.
Or McLaren can utilise the performance advantage of having an extra engine for both their drivers by doing the same thing.

.
How do you know if they exceeded the budget cap? Do you know how much they pay for their engines?
The previous PU exhibited vibrations and the gearbox had problems shifting up and down.
That has been remedied with the new PU. And a new PU for reliability is also an option.

[FittingMechanics]

We don't know if they exceeded the cost cap. They probably didn't.

But Mekies clearly said that the change was not due to reliability concerns so it should count toward the cost cap.

[Quantum]

How do you know if they exceeded the budget cap? Do you know how much they pay for their engines?
The previous PU exhibited vibrations and the gearbox had problems shifting up and down.
That has been remedied with the new PU. And a new PU for reliability is also an option.

Where did I suggest that I know?

Either they did or McLaren can do the same is what I said.

[WardenOfTheNorth]

If Stella wanted a real clarification, he would talk to the FIA, not to the media. I don't even understand why McLaren are being sore here. Best car, WDC locked in, WCC done and dusted and likely going to nail next regulations with likely the best engine. Weird behavior.

What was the context of his quote? Was it unprompted or was it the media asking a leading question to stir things up?

[Badger]

It just seems like a murky issue. Clearly teams have been taking extra engines for years, and I doubt all of those can be attributed to a specific reliability concern at the time of the swap. RB has always been on the limit with their engines and have said that they are this year too. It’s likely they would have risked not taking another engine if quali in Brazil went well, because when you are in the title fight you have to take such risks. But when they went out in Q1 the risk reward for taking another engine changed. The reliability risk over the final 4 races with an old engine is obviously bigger than what you lose from going P17 —> pit lane.

I guess it depends on where the FIA draws the line for a legitimate reliability concern, and what reliability data RB has.

[K1Plus]

We don't know if they exceeded the cost cap. They probably didn't.

But Mekies clearly said that the change was not due to reliability concerns so it should count toward the cost cap.

We can all remember the Bottas experiments in 2021. Could they be doing the same things for Max, but now they have to declare if it's not reliability related.

[FittingMechanics]

It just seems like a murky issue. Clearly teams have been taking extra engines for years, and I doubt all of those can be attributed to a specific reliability concern at the time of the swap. RB has always been on the limit with their engines and have said that they are this year too. It’s likely they would have risked not taking another engine if quali in Brazil went well, because when you are in the title fight you have to take such risks. But when they went out in Q1 the risk reward for taking another engine changed. The reliability risk over the final 4 races with an old engine is obviously bigger than what you lose from going P17 —> pit lane.

I guess it depends on where the FIA draws the line for a legitimate reliability concern, and what reliability data RB has.

Mekies said it was not a change due to reliability concern. It's going to be interesting to see if they can walk that back.

[Farnborough]

We don't know if they exceeded the cost cap. They probably didn't.

But Mekies clearly said that the change was not due to reliability concerns so it should count toward the cost cap.

8

We can all remember the Bottas experiments in 2021. Could they be doing the same things for Max, but now they have to declare if it's not reliability related.

My understanding of that Bottas engine, was that they "experimented" by running more of the time at highest allowable mode in deployment (nothing wrong with that) but then took it out of service immediately. Speculative view, was that it was withdrawn and fully dismantled to establish just how effective their wear parameters had held up, then projection of how hard they could run a likewise example in LH car and prediction of just how much they could flirt with those boundaries without inducing a definite failure.

Mr Wolf kept threatening the world with this "spicy" engine, I recall

In effect, this is not the same scenario, else they'd have got Yuki to beast one and then dismantle.