McLaren CEO Zach Brown has sent a letter to the FIA equating financial rule violations with fraud, calling on the federation to impose appropriate sanctions on the teams that have committed them.
“Any team that spends too much money has gained an unfair advantage in developing this year’s car and will get it next year,” he writes. “To maintain the reputation of Formula 1, the federation must take action…”
Brown’s letter was obtained by BBC Sport and is dated October 12 and addressed to Mohammed bin Sulayem, president of the FIA, with a copy sent to Stefano Domenicali, president of Formula 1.
In addition, the letter was also sent today to the Ferrari, Mercedes, Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Haas teams that were not identified with financial misconduct.
A week ago, the FIA released the results of a financial audit conducted by the federation’s budget control department, on the basis of which three teams failed to receive the so-called “certificates of conformity” – these are Williams, Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing. . At the same time, the first two are only guilty of procedural violations of the financial regulations, while the Milton Keynes team exceeded it, although this was qualified as insignificant by the FIA experts.
Minor violations include violations that do not exceed 5% of the allowed budget, therefore this “delta” in 2021 is $7.5 million.
The FIA report also states that the federation’s budget control department has not yet decided on further action against violators of the regulations.
Red Bull declined to comment on Zack Brown’s letter, but responded to the FIA’s audit results last week, stressing that they caused “surprise and disappointment”.
The McLaren CEO does not mention either Red Bull or Aston Martin in his letter, but speaks of the inadmissibility of any financial violations. In his opinion, any team that spends too much money should be fined twice as much as the violations. In addition, the ability to develop and upgrade the machine next year should be limited. Brown specifically proposes to spend 20% less time using CFD technologies and working in a wind tunnel.
“Cost overrun violations, and potentially procedural violations, should be treated as fraud because they provide significant benefit,” Brown writes. “The bottom line is that any team that spends too much money has gained an unfair advantage in developing this year’s car and will get it next year.
It seems to us that financial sanctions alone are not sufficient as a punishment for overspending or serious procedural violations. In such cases, it is also necessary to apply sports sanctions, the amount of which must be determined by the FIA.
It’s also worth noting that the 5 percent tolerance, within which violations are considered insignificant, Brown is proposing to halve. He urges the FIA to adhere to the principle of transparency and to publish detailed information as soon as possible regarding both the results of the audit and the violations committed, as well as the sanctions that threaten the culprits.
So far, neither party has officially responded to Zack Brown’s letter, mainly because the document was apparently originally confidential and was not intended to be leaked to the press.
Source: F1 News
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