2021 Cost Cap Rumours and Speculation

[Wouter]

Reading through the posts in this speculation thread, I see little speculation. Most seem 100% certain that RBR cheated and should be punished very severely.
Nobody knows what the disagreement between the accountants of the FIA and RBR are about.

Suppose it is about the payments to Newey. The FIA accountants claim that Newey is not on their staff, but RBR's accountants have looked at the UK law books and read that he is on their staff, despite the fact that he sends RBR bills through his own company.
How can you call that cheating? The FIA has better accountants? They can't have done anything wrong/missed anything?
The blame is always on the team?

It's remarkably quiet at the FIA. I'll wait to see which accountants know best what is meant by employee in the UK law
before accusing them of cheating. After all, I think that is a heavy accusation when nothing is known yet.
That they have been above the BC according to the FIA accountants is one thing, but whether that is true and whether it is cheating
remains to be seen. Until the final result and reason is announced, I will wait quietly.

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Sorry, but almost none of this is correct.

First of all, it's not speculation to say that RBR are in breach of the cap. That's factual. The FIA have said they are in breach. RBR may appeal, they may win that appeal, but until such a time they are guilty. None of us even know the exact nature of the breach, so to imagine they may have a strong case to appeal is very big leap imo.

So, to criticise people for acting as if RBR are guilty is way off base. People are saying they are guilty because the FIA have said so and therefore they are.

The next bit about Newey's renumeration simply can't be true. Whether he is employed or uses a personal service company makes no difference to the expense, he can be excluded from the cap as one of the top 3 earners at RBR either way; it's clear from the rules that this is the case. I'm also 100% certain that Newey will not be the only one in the pit lane who is employed this way and is also a "top 3 earner" at their team. I'd imagine the rules were written to allow this specifically because so many of them are engaged in this way.

Also, what's UK law and what isn't has no bearing on the salary cap. It might well be possible to legally do something that falls outside the cap. For example, It's not illegal to spend 500 million on aero development, but it would breach the cap. So the law in that sense isn't relevant.

Since all your remaining arguments hang off the back of this incorrect speculation, i'd say it's invalidated.

None of this precludes newey being in some way involved of course, but in this specific way, no.

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Good reading seems to be very difficult.
Furthermore, you may think that almost everything I say is not correct. That's fine with me.
.

Cheating is a deliberate and dishonest act in order to obtain unfair advantages.

The FIA Cost Cap Administration notes that all Competitors acted at all times in a spirit of good faith and cooperation
throughout the process.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-completes- ... egulations

.

Reading through the posts in this speculation thread, I see little speculation.
Most seem 100% certain that RBR cheated and should be punished very severely.
Nobody knows what the disagreement between the accountants of the FIA and RBR are about.
==========
After all, I think that [cheating] is a heavy accusation when nothing is known yet.
That they have been above the BC according to the FIA accountants is one thing, but whether that is true and whether it is cheating
remains to be seen. Until the final result and reason is announced, I will wait quietly.

[Wil992]

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If we're onto a discussion about the semantics of whether breaking the rules constitutes cheating then i'm going to duck out of this conversation as it inevitably goes nowhere. Enjoy your day.


This post has been mod-edited to show the amount of post quoting that is occurring (particularly within this thread). Multiple post-quoting such as this is not really required and can be edited to the pertinent points when writing. This makes for an easier read for all.
Many thanks, Stu

[DChemTech]

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If the fact is "someone died", it does not mean "hence it's murder".
Conditions and circumstances matter, both in defining the crime and determining the fair punishment - and that's a whole lot more than 'just semantics'.

The fact is that the FIA has noted a cost-cap breach according to the regulations as set up and interpreted by them. A cost cap breach in itself is not as black-and-white as "someone died" as regulations are more open for interpretation than human viability, but as was discussed before, the current verdict that one has to accept is that "RB is guilty of a cost cap breach"; whether or not it may be overturned in the future does not matter for the status now.

Still, we don't know by how much the cost cap was breached, whether it was deliberate or not, on what expenses RB spent more than competitors and how that affects performance, etcetera. All those aspects do matter in determining the severity of the crime and the associated punishment.

As long as those aspects are not clear, declarations of (deliberate) cheating and that 'the only right punishment is disqualification' are speculative as Wouter indicates. Yet many people in this thread are discussing as if it has already been definitively determined that there was a large, deliberate, malicious cap-breach that definitely determined the outcome of the championship and has to be punished with the harshest of measures. As stressed before, it would be very nice if the speculative nature of the whole discussion would be acknowledged by everyone; sure, one can pose "if.. then.." scenarios, but recognize them for what they are: speculations, not facts. The only fact we have is that the cap was breached according to the FIA, no more, no less.

Mod-edit - see above

[Wouter]

If the fact is "someone died", it does not mean "hence it's murder".
Conditions and circumstances matter, both in defining the crime and determining the fair punishment - and that's a whole lot more than 'just semantics'.

The fact is that the FIA has noted a cost-cap breach according to the regulations as set up and interpreted by them. A cost cap breach in itself is not as black-and-white as "someone died" as regulations are more open for interpretation than human viability, but as was discussed before, the current verdict that one has to accept is that "RB is guilty of a cost cap breach"; whether or not it may be overturned in the future does not matter for the status now.

Still, we don't know by how much the cost cap was breached, whether it was deliberate or not, on what expenses RB spent more than competitors and how that affects performance, etcetera. All those aspects do matter in determining the severity of the crime and the associated punishment.

As long as those aspects are not clear, declarations of (deliberate) cheating and that 'the only right punishment is disqualification' are speculative as Wouter indicates. Yet many people in this thread are discussing as if it has already been definitively determined that there was a large, deliberate, malicious cap-breach that definitely determined the outcome of the championship and has to be punished with the harshest of measures. As stressed before, it would be very nice if the speculative nature of the whole discussion would be acknowledged by everyone; sure, one can pose "if.. then.." scenarios, but recognize them for what they are: speculations, not facts. The only fact we have is that the cap was breached according to the FIA, no more, no less.

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Totally agree. You have articulated the whole current situation very well. Thank you, I couldn't.

[LM10]

The FIA Cost Cap Administration notes that all Competitors acted at all times in a spirit of good faith and cooperation
throughout the process.

https://www.fia.com/news/fia-completes- ... egulations

You know that this quote does not have anything to do with the probable cheating of a team, right? It does only say that the teams cooperated with the officials in the process of analyzing.

[dans79]

Hmm. The accountants agreed in 2020. There would have appeared to be no issue with the interim report, so RBR must have changed it’s reporting after 31/3/21. The teams wrote the rules with the FIA. Nine other teams managed just fine.

Or someone in the FIA decided to interpret the writing in their own way, based on pressure from Team Principal W. I do wonder why Sheila-Ann Rao's role changed mid-year at Mercedes from General Counsel to Special Advisor, all the while employed under Mercedes Petronas Formula One team. Perhaps a change in title to avoid cost caps? Who knows, maybe she was earning bonus off the books from Principal W as an x-mas gift or going away present.

It was done, just because it would annoy some people!

[TimW]

You know that this quote does not have anything to do with the probable cheating of a team, right? It does only say that the teams cooperated with the officials in the process of analyzing.

The FIA statement also included:

The FIA would also note that with respect to this first year of the application of the Financial Regulations the intervention of the FIA Cost Cap Administration has been limited to reviewing the submissions made by the Competitors and that no full formal investigations were launched.

They only reviewed the submitted documents, and did not investigate further. So if it was cheating, it was cheating in plain sight.

It seems RB needs to be trained in their malicious ways, just providing the evidence to the FIA is a rookie mistake.

[mendis]

The suspicion is, the news of F1 teams breaching cost caps, seeming has leaked out from a former Mercedes Advisor, Shaila-Ann Rao. Shaila was appointed as FIA General Secratary of Motorsport in the month of July this year.

There are no straight links to this rumor, but Ferrari had expressed concerns over her appointment.

https://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-auto ... en-F1-news

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferr ... /10320220/

[littlebigcat]

The suspicion is, the news of F1 teams breaching cost caps, seeming has leaked out from a former Mercedes Advisor, Shaila-Ann Rao. Shaila was appointed as FIA General Secratary of Motorsport in the month of July this year.

There are no straight links to this rumor, but Ferrari had expressed concerns over her appointment.

https://www.express.co.uk/sport/f1-auto ... en-F1-news

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferr ... /10320220/

This is unfounded hearsay that exists to discredit the FIA’s findings. It’s same as Horner’s claims that it should be made public because it was just over food and pay, which is being done to play the public.

[littlebigcat]

It seems RB needs to be trained in their malicious ways, just providing the evidence to the FIA is a rookie mistake.

Hiding overspend would be actual cheating. Including your overspend and thinking your interpretation makes it excluded is just bad governance. They both have consequence. But a team overspending by $7m and including it in their report wouldn’t be cheating.

[rijtuig]

Who cares who leaked this info tbh? I do not advocate the situation - but we should not move away the focus and not let any team get away IF they have breached any rule/agreement.

[GrizzleBoy]

Imagine if it wasn't leaked and the FIA and RB had all the bandwidth required to frame and fit the story just how they wanted to.

Maybe the leak happened because it became apparent that a cover up was about to occur.

It's easy to speculate in any direction.

[mendis]

Who cares who leaked this info tbh? I do not advocate the situation - but we should not move away the focus and not let any team get away IF they have breached any rule/agreement.

Imagine if Mercedes or Ferrari come up with a ground breaking performance idea and consults FIA to ensure it's legal and FIA says it's legal. In the meantime, that idea gets leaked from FIA to Red Bull and they also implement it and Mercedes gets to know it was leaked. I am sure we shouldn't bother about who did it and not hold FIA responsible for it. The breach is a problem and the leak is an equally big problem that destroys FIA's credibility to handle confidential matters.

[rijtuig]

Imagine if it wasn't leaked and the FIA and RB had all the bandwidth required to frame and fit the story just how they wanted to.

Maybe the leak happened because it became apparent that a cover up was about to occur.

It's easy to speculate in any direction.

I'm pretty sure that is indeed the reason this has been brought to the media. But yea, if that takes what is needed, so be it. All the Dutch RBR fans here, I get your frustration - but you all know what would happen if it did not reach the media, just like the Toeslagenaffaire.

[littlebigcat]

You know…the FIA weren’t the only one who knew RBR had breached the cost cap.