Red Bull Racing has to deal with a huge cost after the Grands Prix of Great Britain and Hungary. The RB16B's need a lot of repair work, without Max Verstappen or Sergio Perez being to blame. There is a discussion in Formula 1 about who has to pay the bill.
Since 2021, there has been a $145 million budget cap per season in Formula 1. Some of that money is budgeted to repair the cars after crashes, but it's somewhat crooked that Red Bull Racing will have less money left over to roll out updates at the end of the race as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas bang out the Austrian cars.
F1 teams divided
Christian Horner already stated at the Hungaroring that the FIA should start looking into this. The team boss of the Milton Keynes-based formation was supported by Mattia Binotto, who also believes that guilty rivals should pay for the damages of the affected teams. Andreas Seidl of McLaren, for his part, disagrees.
"I definitely will not go in the direction Christian is going, mentioning in every second sentence the cost cap and how much you get hurt by it by every accident on the track. In the end, that is part of the game we are in. It is down to us to manage the budget in the right way", the team boss of the current number four in the constructors' championship told various media after the Hungarian GP.