2021 Cost Cap Rumours and Speculation

[Big Tea]

The UK based teams will have to return tax records, which I assume the auditor will have access to. This is a very good 'cross check' v what is supplied to FIA, but unlike the tax people they can not directly cross check with the supply companies. As I said previously, these people do it for the governments and law agencies to to catch crooks by the back door, so it would tabe a brave or foolish team to deliberately try to pull the wool over their eyes. Not only now, but if something comes out years in the future it would not be welcome.

Accidental overspend should probably be expected if not accepted but any attempt at deliberate cheating should be stamped on hard


Edit.
Something that had not occurred to me is how would they treat volunteer workers and work experience (by any other name)?

Some 'students' doing unpaid work experience with the promises of consideration for a job in this or other owned companies can cover a lot of labour and skills, especially if data processing is considered part of their education not team development.

I would think all the teams would have options to fiddle this if it was not expressly controlled.
We did touch on it long ago, but no one seemed to know much about the reg.

[Just_a_fan]

It all depends of course. if RedBull transferred people to RedBull Technology for and let them do the same R&D work but at a fraction of their actual cost in a way to get around the cap, that something different than a small dispute if the administration overhead of a department that also does work for the f1 team should be on the budget or not (for instance).

I would say that sort of move, by any team, would be a simple contravention of the budget cap. The only way to do more within the budget cap is to pay the staff less and that's not likely to work for long.

[Jolle]

The UK based teams will have to return tax records, which I assume the auditor will have access to. This is a very good 'cross check' v what is supplied to FIA, but unlike the tax people they can not directly cross check with the supply companies. As I said previously, these people do it for the governments and law agencies to to catch crooks by the back door, so it would tabe a brave or foolish team to deliberately try to pull the wool over their eyes. Not only now, but if something comes out years in the future it would not be welcome.

Accidental overspend should probably be expected if not accepted but any attempt at deliberate cheating should be stamped on hard


Edit.
Something that had not occurred to me is how would they treat volunteer workers and work experience (by any other name)?

Some 'students' doing unpaid work experience with the promises of consideration for a job in this or other owned companies can cover a lot of labour and skills, especially if data processing is considered part of their education not team development.

I would think all the teams would have options to fiddle this if it was not expressly controlled.
We did touch on it long ago, but no one seemed to know much about the reg.

For students, volunteers etc they would do the same as for any gifts (like sponsored items or stuff or data, etc, from within the group): they get a value (for instance for subsidies in The Netherlands it’s 9 euro per hour for a volunteer, so from the top of my head)

[Just_a_fan]

The UK based teams will have to return tax records,

And the simplified version is accessible to anyone.

Red Bull: https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

For year ending 31 Dec 2020 (so before the cap came in), RBR's turnover was £229.7m. Turnover includes things from sponsors and is included at "fair value". I guess that defining "fair value" is one of the central issues for the FIA. Interestingly Red Bull's directors' salaries are offset against other companies to a large extent. Mercedes paid over 3 times as much in directors' salaries. £6.89m vs £2.1m. These sorts of things will be one area where teams will be able to be "creative" along with "sales" to other parts of the group. Interesting to see that Red Bull made much less than £1m profit after taxation and other deductions in 2020 according to their statement.

Mercedes's stuff is here: https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

Other UK-registered teams will have there statements available on the site too.

[chrisc90]

5k in heritage cars as valuation.

Must be the biggest joke of the century that? I mean if they have a few F1 cars stashed at the back of the garage, the tyres alone probably worth more than 5k

[Just_a_fan]

5k in heritage cars as valuation.

Must be the biggest joke of the century that? I mean if they have a few F1 cars stashed at the back of the garage, the tyres alone probably worth more than 5k

That's £5 million. For some reason they haven't put (000s) at the heads of the various columns, but that's obviously what it is as otherwise the company turnover was only £355k which is obviously not so.

[chrisc90]

5k in heritage cars as valuation.

Must be the biggest joke of the century that? I mean if they have a few F1 cars stashed at the back of the garage, the tyres alone probably worth more than 5k

That's £5 million. For some reason they haven't put (000s) at the heads of the various columns, but that's obviously what it is as otherwise the company turnover was only £355k which is obviously not so.

Thought as much. Seems a strange error to omit.

Interesting how many staff they have compared to red bull!

[Just_a_fan]

5k in heritage cars as valuation.

Must be the biggest joke of the century that? I mean if they have a few F1 cars stashed at the back of the garage, the tyres alone probably worth more than 5k

That's £5 million. For some reason they haven't put (000s) at the heads of the various columns, but that's obviously what it is as otherwise the company turnover was only £355k which is obviously not so.

Thought as much. Seems a strange error to omit.

Interesting how many staff they have compared to red bull!

Well, the number that Red Bull attribute to the core team, anyway. They cover director salaries from other areas, no doubt some jobs are covered across the group by the same people e.g. HR.

I wonder if any resource is shared with the sister team and thus "off booked" from the main team. Likewise Mercedes and the engine division - if you could get away with using HR, finance, facilities management, etc., from other parts of the group, you would wouldn't you?

[basti313]

That's £5 million. For some reason they haven't put (000s) at the heads of the various columns, but that's obviously what it is as otherwise the company turnover was only £355k which is obviously not so.

Thought as much. Seems a strange error to omit.

Interesting how many staff they have compared to red bull!

Well, the number that Red Bull attribute to the core team, anyway. They cover director salaries from other areas, no doubt some jobs are covered across the group by the same people e.g. HR.

I wonder if any resource is shared with the sister team and thus "off booked" from the main team. Likewise Mercedes and the engine division - if you could get away with using HR, finance, facilities management, etc., from other parts of the group, you would wouldn't you?

If you use Torro Rosso HR for hiring RedBull mechanics this goes into the budget cap of the RedBull F1 team. (If HR goes into it in any way...not even sure of that?

You should not misread the company costs vs the budget cap. They book engineers and engineer hours into projects. I do not think judging the plain costs is of any interest, this is easy to control. The interesting point is how they book the hours. For example how much Adrian is designing boats and how much he is designing F1 cars. Same goes for Allison at Merc, he is CTO for only the reason of the cost cap.

Everyone needs to book

[MattWellsyWells]

How much difference does the limits on CFD and wind tunnel time make to a team's budget?

For example, people saying Red Bull must be over the budget cap because of all their upgrades, could it be that they have more money to spend on producing parts because they are spending less on wind tunnel and CFD?

[tpe]

Reminds me another "creative" interpretation of rules: time spent in wind tunnel. If memory serves me well, back then RB was recording the hours only after the air reached full speed. I don't remember what was the outcome of their dispute with FIA though...

[langedweil]

Reminds me another "creative" interpretation of rules: time spent in wind tunnel. If memory serves me well, back then RB was recording the hours only after the air reached full speed. I don't remember what was the outcome of their dispute with FIA though...

Yeah, well .. then windtunnel time is just poorly defined, isn't it?
Shouldn't be that hard one would say

[Edax]

It would be interesting to see the overlap between the F1 design team and projects like the Valkyrie, Valhalla and the RB17 hypercar.

While these are fundamentally different from the F1 car it looks to me that they are sufficiently alike to be used to tinker around with concepts until they reach a certain level of maturity and then transfer them to F1. That could IMO potentially save quite some costs.

[Cassius]

Reminds me another "creative" interpretation of rules: time spent in wind tunnel. If memory serves me well, back then RB was recording the hours only after the air reached full speed. I don't remember what was the outcome of their dispute with FIA though...

In March this year Newey said RB is considering building a new windtunnel because the slow startup time of their old windtunnel is costing them part of their windtunnel allocation. This suggests the FIA is taking that into account.

[tpe]

Yes! Now. Back in 20xx (when the wind tunnel time restrictions introduced) they didn't.
Generally, I think they have very effective legal-engineering collaboration.