Guenther Steiner and Andreas Seidl are not party to what Christian Horner and other top F1 outfits are speaking regarding change in the Cost Cap.
Budgets have raised their ugly heads again in light of Turn 1 clash in Hungarian GP. Even as far back as Imola, Toto Wolff was giving vent to his feelings when Valtteri Bottas and George Russell collided, costing Mercedes a heavy bill in Cost Cap era.
Red Bull have been in the wars with their last two Grands Prix in tatters and Christian Horner has been pretty much on with his concerns around his budgets. Its been an expensive time for them to say the least and now Ferrari have thrown their hat into the ring too voicing that rivals should foot the damage after Charles Leclerc’s shunt.
Tail-enders Haas have had a few headaches this season with shunts, quite a few to be honest. Some were reasonably harmless but some were not. Steiner has had a few headaches and eventually voiced his opinion in Hungary, but when asked about the concerns raised by Horner about Cost Cap, he didn’t any change is needed.
“No I don’t think, we need to live with it, we need to budget for this we need to be flexible enough that to management then all of a sudden if we had less crashes do we bring it
down again, the budget caps,” said Steiner to written media including FormulaRapida.net.
“So you adjust it how many crashes you’ve got I think it’s part of racing and with the path of how much risk you take in a race and do whatever you do so I think it’s part of racing the crashes, you cannot adjust the budget or regulations on how many crashes you’ve got because for me it doesn’t make really any change is needed on this one.”
An interesting perspective on the topic. Perhaps because Haas have been reasonably okay financially off late, Steiner could be trying to get one over those at the sharp end who reckon they have suddenly got a raw deal of late because of the last two weekends perhaps.
Echoing his sentiments and slightly also taking a dig at Horner is McLaren’s Seidl, who clearly noted that he is not the one to side with the Red Bull chief and his comments. “No, it doesn’t need addressing, not at all,” he said to written media including FormulaRapida.net. “I definitely will not go in the direction that Christian is going, mentioning every second sentence the cost cap and how much it will be hurt by it by an accident on track.
“In the end, it’s part of the game we’re in. It’s down to us to manage the budget in the right way. It will be a challenge to make sure now we have enough parts of the new specification available for Spa, but on the other hand, we have a great team back home in production and the engineering side, so I am confident we can recover from what happened. I don’t see that it affects anything of our plans, to be honest.
“It is quite simple and straightforward. At the beginning of the season, based on the experience of previous years, you simply have to account for certain crash damage per year. That’s what you have to figure in, and that’s what we have in the budget and that’s the challenge that we are in. It’s the same for everyone,” summed up Seidl
Having said that, McLaren have been pretty impressive on track so far. Lando Norris at Hungaroring had his first shunt this year at any part of the weekend. At the same time, Daniel Ricciardo had a damaging qualifying at Baku with a bit of an off but apart from this the F1 outfit has been pretty clean.
Some might also think Seidl is having a rub at Horner but overall McLaren have been the best all season really. Haas, though, have had a fair bit of “damage” each weekend so the opinion of Steiner is interesting. When all is said and done, though, accidents will happen and it is up to the teams, regardless of how good or bad they are to really just get on with same.
The story was written by Neil Farrell
Here’s what Christian Horner said after Hungary
Here’s what the Lap 1 carnagers said