2021 Cost Cap Rumours and Speculation

[littlebigcat]

I think there is a discussion around Red Bull Racing, which is the license holder, Red Bull Applied Technology, and likely Adrian Newey's consultancy company work within the cost cap.

RBR the license holder and the one which must abide by the cost cap only has 59 employees, RBAT has almost twenty times that. Clearly RBR purchases services from RBAT to develop and manufacture their race cars as well as provide race team management. Taking Newey into account, are RBR contracting him to work for RBAT, or are RBAT doing that directly?

If RBR are doing it directly I can see why they might claim his cost is exempt from the cap, but if its RBAT I can't see how RBR can claim the cost of a specific person is excluded from a service they are provided.

And I'd argue anyway, if RBR are contracting Newey's company for a design service they are paying for that companies service not an individual, so shouldn't be able to claim that cost as a personal one.

[Just_a_fan]

I do a similar thing at work where technical people also do some occasional work for the sales team. The time with sales needs to be under the sales budget.

I've had something similar in the past as well. Even though i was a salaried employee, i had to log all my work accurate to 15 minute increments. This meant from day to day my salary game out of the budgets for multiple departments. It also meant it ended up being charged to multiple different clients!

Yeah, BTDT. A bit of a pain and usually ends up being gamed to a degree.

[djones]

Is there a date set to announce the punishment?

[hollus]

Breaching the cap is cheating. This is binary.

This is simply not true. The salary cap is essentially a rule, and a rule written with "penalties" included.
It is a team's choice to "stretch the rule" and accept a risk. Hell, even to deliberately overspend 6 million would not be "plain cheating" as there is an accompanying penalty in the rules. This is F1, all teams push the rules to the limit. And we don't know if they pushed past the limit intentionally or not. We will know in due time, I suppose.

But my point... breaking a rule is binary. That the same is cheating is...not what this is.

Teams systematically push tire pressures al low as they can, to the limit of their tolerances and controls... or they cool the fuel to the limit of what the rules allow, and in occasion get a bit wrong. They break the rule by playing to close to the limit, and the penalty is, say, disqualification from that one race. Or Honda changes 6 enfines in the same race and takes 150 grid slot penalties at once.
That a rule broken, a penalty given, but not cheating.

One accepts certain risks based on the potential penalties.

Maybe a better example is a soccer defender in a game you are winning 1-0. It is minute 93 and your goalkeeper has been beaten, but you are in the goal line, jump, stretch your hands and deflect the ball with your hand as if you were the goalkeeper.
Intentionally deflecting the ball with your hands is not allowed for a defender. But hey, done, and it is not cheating. It is a foul, with a well described punishment in the rules: You get a red card and a penalty kick against. But no goal. In this case, well worth the risk. And no, we normally don't see it that blatant, but yes, we every week see a midfilder stop a fast break in a similar way or by hugging a rival in exchange for a yellow card. The first might be called cheating by some, the second is called "an intelligent midfielder". It is all context dependent.
That it is a measured and calculated risk does not automatically make it cheating.

I don't think trying to frame this as cheating or not cheating helps the discussion, honestly. It might be, it might not be, it might be something in the middle and we simply don't have enough information to judge. But, hey, nuances... nah!

[dans79]

Breaching the cap is cheating. This is binary.

This is simply not true. The salary cap is essentially a rule, and a rule written with "penalties" included.
It is a team's choice to "stretch the rule" and accept a risk. Hell, even to deliberately overspend 6 million would not be "plain cheating" as there is an accompanying penalty in the rules. This is F1, all teams push the rules to the limit. And we don't know if they pushed past the limit intentionally or not. We will know in due time, I suppose.

It might be a cultural difference, because where I'm from it doesn't matter if you broke the rules intentionally or unintentionally, its almost universally referred to as cheating. With that being said I generally try to avoid using the term online, specially in mixed cultural conversations, as some people react extremely negatively to the term!

[KeiKo403]

Breaching the cap is cheating. This is binary.

This is simply not true. The salary cap is essentially a rule, and a rule written with "penalties" included.
It is a team's choice to "stretch the rule" and accept a risk. Hell, even to deliberately overspend 6 million would not be "plain cheating" as there is an accompanying penalty in the rules. This is F1, all teams push the rules to the limit. And we don't know if they pushed past the limit intentionally or not. We will know in due time, I suppose.

It might be a cultural difference, because where I'm from it doesn't matter if you broke the rules intentionally or unintentionally, its almost universally referred to as cheating. With that being said I generally try to avoid using the term online, specially in mixed cultural conversations, as some people react extremely negatively to the term!

To use the term ‘cheat’ isn’t a terrible description of what happened.

act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.

[hollus]

universally referred to as cheating

I wonder if on top of cultural differences, there might be a language barrier at work here. I am not a native english speaker, but I guess the exact connotation of "cheat" are different for native english speakers and for non-native ones. I know that I am adding some meaning from the Spanish translation to it. Possibly my fault in that case. In my example above, the defender would be making a "falta", it would even be "ilegal" but it would not be a "trampa" in spanish. Only trampa translates as cheating, but other languages might have different terms, potentially with more overlap.

A bit above, JAF discussed the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion... my first though was "it is the same!" (It would more or less be the same in spanish). But thinking for a second, it is not, one is whithin the tax rules and the other without the tax rules. Of course, there are gray zones in both and those gray zones surely overlap, but gramatically... not the same. Good point to keep in mind!

[hollus]

[quote
To use the term ‘cheat’ isn’t a terrible description of what happened.

act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.

[/quote]

Is driving, in a regular road, over the speed limit, "cheating"? It fit into the above description... It is not so black and white. There are nuances, or at least there might be. Very imperfect information to judge on.

[LM10]

That it is a measured and calculated risk does not automatically make it cheating.

If they’ve intentionally gone over the limit by measuring the potential risks and penalties, they should not insist on not having done it.

[dans79]

Is driving, in a regular road, over the speed limit, "cheating"? It fit into the above description... It is not so black and white. There are nuances, or at least there might be. Very imperfect information to judge on.

in my area, cheating is only used in the context of sports and games. Breaking the speed limit is considered breaking the law.

[codetower]

To use the term ‘cheat’ isn’t a terrible description of what happened.

act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.

Is driving, in a regular road, over the speed limit, "cheating"? It fit into the above description... It is not so black and white. There are nuances, or at least there might be. Very imperfect information to judge on.

It depends. Simply driving over the speed limit, would not necessarily be considered cheating. But in a competition, lets assume that you have two cars trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. Car A exceeds the same speed limit... and wins because of this, is that cheating?

In F1 today, what example would you use to signify cheating?

[chrisc90]

Just to add confusion, Even breaking the law, in the example of speeding, has a tolerance to it.

Here in the U.K. we might be 35mph in a 30mph, but you are only given a educational course for the first ‘offence’.

[dans79]

Just to add confusion, Even breaking the law, in the example of speeding, has a tolerance to it.

Here in the U.K. we might be 35mph in a 30mph, but you are only given a educational course for the first ‘offence’.

it gets more convoluted than that here. Unless you are in a school zone, or residential area with a lot of pedestrians, the police officer generally won't waste his time on you if your are only 4 or 5 mph over the limit. You usually have to be closer to double digits over for them to care.

for example (pulled from a blog on traffic violations in my area)

If you are driving anywhere from 1 to 20 mph over the limit, expect a $120 fine. Speeding 21-30 miles per hour over the limit will likely lead to a fine of around $140.

Driving 26 to 34 miles per hour over the limit is considered a Class B misdemeanor and can bring approximately 6 months in prison and a maximum of $1,500 in fines.

Speeding 35 miles per hour or more over the limit is considered a Class A misdemeanor. This consequences for this increase from the previous set of punishments. They include up to one year in prison and a maximum of $2,500 in fines.

Fines can be much more serious in certain locations or conditions. For example, fines in school zones and work zones are higher. If you are caught speeding in a work zone, you’ll get a minimum fine of $375 and a mandatory appearance in court.

[chrisc90]

To use the term ‘cheat’ isn’t a terrible description of what happened.

Is driving, in a regular road, over the speed limit, "cheating"? It fit into the above description... It is not so black and white. There are nuances, or at least there might be. Very imperfect information to judge on.

It depends. Simply driving over the speed limit, would not necessarily be considered cheating. But in a competition, lets assume that you have two cars trying to get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. Car A exceeds the same speed limit... and wins because of this, is that cheating?

In F1 today, what example would you use to signify cheating?

Personally id say that was something like actively running a car that is under weight. Gifted you are always going to get found out at the end of it. So the ‘cheating’ isn’t worth it. (Maybe they did run Perez underweight in Dubai ‘21 - hence the unexplained retirement)

But cheating in f1 terms is probably quite hard to do given the strict scrutiny at the end of a race…. Only thing I can thing of is a excessively flexible wing in the hope you don’t get found out.

Anything else falls under a loophole in the regulations, or isn’t strictly covered as being allowed or not in the rule book. DAS, party mode, flexi front wings… etc. none of that was in the rule book, and gained you a significant advantage in competing events, but was later closed for the following season of regulations.

If a team can find something that gives them a competitive advantage that isn’t specifically disallowed in the rules, then fair game in my opinion. Look at the party engine mode for example, Wasnt said it was banned in the rules at the time of being used, but it meant you could run your engine at 110% (example) in the effort to be much faster than your competitors in qualifying, who weren’t running their engine at 110% also.

[KeiKo403]

Best example of sports cheating I can think of is probably a pitcher in baseball using pine tar. In that example there is absolutely no way it could be considered as anything other than cheating. Using a corked bat is illegal but the batsman could say player x handed me the bat, I didn’t know it was illegal.
Or a golfer carrying an extra club in their bag because they miss counted, accidental but still illegal.

I believe a Spanish national paralympic basketball team one year was made up of mostly non Paralympic qualifying players, that was cheating.

I feel in F1 (and many other sports) it’s hard to judge intent, it’s the intent that makes it cheating in my eyes.

*edit - lost the thread quote sorry, was responding to a question about examples of cheating in sports*