The FIA are reportedly clamping down on teams potentially exploiting a loophole in the cost cap regulations. Most F1 teams on the grid have other sporting projects they’re involved in, such as America’s Cup yachts, race bikes and other designs.
It means that there are often personnel being moved from one team to another, such as James Allison at Mercedes. Allison returned to his role as chief technical director with Mercedes’ F1 team recently after working on INEOS Britannia’s America’s Cup yacht.
Red Bull have ventures in Nascar while Ferrari had the winning car in the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans. The FIA have seemingly grown fearful that teams are using their non-F1 divisions to help find minimal gains without breaching cost cap regulations, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport.
And the four leading F1 teams in the Constructors’ Championship are now said to be under the watchful eye of the FIA with a new technical directive introduced to try and regulate cost cap rules even closer. It’s said that the FIA have been suspicious about F1 teams utilising the loophole in the cost cap regulations to use information gained from another sporting division while not having to worry about how it affects their budget.
But the new technical directive, called TD45, has been introduced to try and combat that. While the FIA have no power to legislate teams running other sporting divisions, the new technical directive has been brought in to ensure any ‘Intellectual Property’ used from special projects outside of F1 is accounted for as part of their cost cap.
It means that teams will no longer be able to utilise their vast sporting empire free of charge to help with their F1 car design. The report from La Gazzetta dello Sport claims Aston Martin, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes have all be given ‘requests for clarification’ from the FIA on what knowledge they’ve gained from non-F1 projects.
A source also told Autosport that the new directive has already ‘had an impact’ on the teams involved. They told Autosport: “Some have been forced to act because they realised what they were doing is no longer allowed.
“But the difficult part is they will have been doing it since January 1 (when the TD declared a cut off point), so they will have had a spend up until this point that they now need to address and somehow claw back.”
Both Red Bull and Aston Martin were punished for breaching the 2021 cost cap last year. Aston Martin were fined £354,000 ($450,000) for their infringements while Red Bull were given a 10 per cent reduction in aerodynamic testing as well as being ordered to pay £5.5million ($7m).
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