Villeneuve proposes interesting penalty: 'Pay one million to every team'

A current topic of discussion in Formula 1 is the budget cap. Teams such as Red Bull Racing, Mercedes and Ferrari are very worried about not being able to keep to the limit given the high inflation rate, but do not know exactly what kind of punishment awaits them if they go over the limit. Jacques Villeneuve suggests an interesting solution that should discourage top teams from spending too much money.

At the moment it is certain that teams will be penalised for exceeding the budget ceiling, but it is not clear what the penalties will be. Earlier this year, Williams was the first F1 team to be penalised for breaching the new financial regulations; the team was fined $25,000. However, this was an administrative offence and not a breach of the cost ceiling.

Villeneuve proposes remarkable penalty

The recent increase in the budget ceiling was the result of many discussions by team bosses, with Christian Horner in particular frequently commenting on the expected difficulties of meeting the set limit. "It's as if they decided from the start that they would go past it anyway," Villeneuve stated on the Dirty Side of the Track-podcast. "Also because there's no clear penalty. It could be a financial penalty, then who cares? It could be a few points, but it could also be exclusion from the championship."

The latter is difficult for Villeneuve to imagine and, according to the former F1 driver, also depends on how far the limit is exceeded. According to Villeneuve, there is a much better and also fairer penalty to consider. "If you overspend by one million, you have to give one million to every other team on the grid and they're allowed to spend that million even beyond their cap," the 1997 world champion proposed.