"Not one penny was spent on the performance of the car"- Christian Horner defends Red Bull after penalties over F1 cost cap breach

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has defended his team by clarifying that it achieved no performance benefit from the F1 cost cap breach. The team held a press conference after the Accepted Breach Agreement (ABA) was released, where Horner gave his side of how the Milton Keynes-based squad was found guilty of the breach.

The Red Bull boss was adamant that the team did not gain any performance advantage as he said:

"I stand by the statement there was zero benefit because the amount we want over - as I've just explained - we believe there are mitigating factors. If we went over because of sick pay, if we went over because we paid people that we felt weren't in the cap, in terms of cost within catering - not one penny was spent on performance of the vehicle. Not one penny was spent on the performance of the car. I'm astounded that there are no other teams that have found themselves in this position, but good for them that eight of them were fully compliant."

He further added:

"I think, as I say, there's lessons to learn. Did we see any on-track performance? No, we didn't. Are there things that we can do better from an accounting perspective? Of course, there's lessons that have been learned, but not just on our side, on all sides."

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Red Bull boss confident that his team won't breach 2022 F1 season budget cap

Christian Horner was questioned by Motorsport about whether Red Bull would be within the budget cap for the 2022 F1 season, to which he said that the team had put the least components on the car this season. Horner indicated how Max Verstappen was the driver that had the least repair parts all season out of any driver on the grid and that Red Bull had brought the least repairs out of any team this season.

He said:

"If I look at the 2022 rate of development, I think that other teams have put significantly more components on the car than us this year. If you look at crash damage alone, which again, is hugely expensive, and something I think that needs personally looking at within the cap - when you look at the quantum of some of the crashes this year, some of which are not the fault of your driver or your team, Max Verstappen is the driver that has incurred the least amount of damage this year. In terms of parts used, again, we are at the lower end."

The Red Bull boss proceeded to add:

"So one can never say with 100% confidence that we're comfortably within the cap, particularly after the process that we've just been through. But we feel that there are a lot of one-off costs that have been included within this. And we are confident and hopeful that with the process of these regulations being tidied up for future, it will become less of an accounting world championship."

The team has been sanctioned with a $7 million fine and a 10% reduction in development time. It will be interesting to see the overall impact of this penalty on the team.