Numerous sources claim that the FIA has offered Red Bull an ‘Accepted Breach Agreement’ in a bid to settle budget cap breach row.

However, if such an agreement has been offered it is likely to provoke even more of a storm.

It is understood that the FIA made the offer to Red Bull days after the Japanese Grand Prix at which Max Verstappen secured his second title and following which the sport’s governing body finally revealed the results of its analysis of the teams’ financial submissions.

Under the terms of the agreement it is understood that Red Bull would have to accept whatever punishment the sport's governing body decides is appropriate, and without recourse to appeal, however, crucially it rules out such things as points deduction or a reduction of the team's budget cap in future seasons.

Quite how rival teams - or indeed fans - will view this remains to be seen, however, with the most likely punishment likely to be a fine, it would be widely seen as a soft option when one considers that when announcing the cap Ross Brawn had warned of dire consequences for those that exceeded it, including exclusion from the championship.

Red Bull is understood to be considering the offer of the agreement and is said to be issuing a statement on Friday, while Saturday sees team boss, Christian Horner at the official FIA press conference alongside Zak Brown, who earlier this week insisted that exceeding the cap is cheating.

Should the Austrian team reject the agreement, the matter would be put in the hands of the Cost Cap Adjudication Panel which would investigate the 'minor' breach which is understood to be around $2m.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Superbird70, 21/10/2022 16:32

"The penalty will be something like they have to remove all Red Bull branding for the remainder of this season, and next year's preseason testing. That'll fix them."

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2. Posted by meatball, 21/10/2022 14:32

"A storm not unlike the sh*tstorm caused by the secret deal that ferrari made when they were burning oil."

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3. Posted by Spindoctor, 21/10/2022 12:15

"As someone who used to take an interest in Politics, this "rumour" has the appearance of political "kite flying" (AKLA "running it up the pole, to see who salutes"). If so, I think the various other items in today's Pitpass News column indicate how well this possibility has been received....

The crux of all this is that FIA introduced a Cost Cap which is unenforceable & is unmeasurable except in the alternate reality of Corporate Accountancy. This failing has been highlighted from its inception.

In addition to that piece of utter stupidity, they did not make it clear precisely what penalties would follow from breaching these murky Rules.
Consequently, we are at a place where nobody is happy with what's happening. Poor old Christian is sobbing uncontrollably on Mrs Horner's bosom. Meanwhile Toto, Lewis, Zak & Uncle Tom Cobley & all are rushing about beating their breasts & rending their cloth in grief & anger.
Us poor old "fans" (or ant-people, as we appear to the Powers That Be) are variously incensed that nice Mr Horner & his merry gang might be punished at all, or more incensed that they are not immediately cast into Hell or worse.

An interesting footnote is that Aston Martin who are also supposedly "guilty" seem to have escaped not only any punishment; but have disappeared from the debate. Maybe that's because they clearly gained no benefit from whatever "cheating" they engaged in?
Grist to the DTS mill, but Motor Racing?"

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4. Posted by Motorsport-fan, 21/10/2022 10:02

"The facts are there was an overspend, no-one appears now to dispute that, a figure of $2m has been put forward, if this is the case then why should other teams not factor this overspend into there budgets if the penalty is meaningless?
If the FIA seriously wants the budget cap to succeed then penalties as Ross Brawn is quoted as saying would have "dire consequences" for the team breaking the cap, the only option is points deduction and a fine.
Also there should be no "minor" breach, this term is far to lax, you are either compliant or you are not."

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5. Posted by Hobgoblin, 21/10/2022 8:53

"@Max Noble - minor breach = points deduction/restriction of cost limit for subsequent years does not seem to be unreasonable for what is essentially cheating. All of these can be appropriately scaled to the level of the breach.
Penalty for a major breach - blatant cheating - could be as draconian as banning the team from subsequent championships and/or banning management deemed accountable from taking part in FIA sanctioned events.

Both of these have precedent in the current era, McLaren technical documents, Flavio's crash instructions - and the sanction has to be made to hurt. Otherwise the whole cost cap will become unenforceable, and the teams will just add the cost of the breach to their account forecast."

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6. Posted by Ricardo_sanchez, 21/10/2022 7:54

"@Kenji /Max Noble - is it not correct to say that the regulations actually state that the penalty for a Minor Overspend may include:

- “deduction of Constructors' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach” and/or

- “deduction of Drivers' Championship points awarded for the Championship that took place within the Reporting Period of the breach”?

These sanctions appear in the list of Minor Sporting Penalties, within the regulations. Or have I misinterpreted them?

Clearly it would not require exclusion from the 2021 championship for the result to change, if the penalty chosen was a points deduction.

I’m not suggesting this is the appropriate penalty, nor that the FIA would be brave/foolish enough to try it. But the rules do set out a menu of penalty options and points deductions fall into the “Minor” category, as far as I can see. "

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7. Posted by Stitch431, 21/10/2022 4:57

"Fact is, that the FIA never announced what punishment will be given for what kind of breach. That is as if a police officer comes to you after you went through a red traffic light and says: I saw you making a traffic offense, now I will have to think about your punishment. I will get back to you in a couple of days to tell you how much you will have to pay, or if I decide to put you in jail for it... Would you accept that? Therefore, the FIA will have a hard time defending a severe punishment, and this might well be the reason for offering Red Bull a deal. However, if they really did that, actually they say to them: "swallow this or you will have a big risk of being punished more severely when you appeal and try to prove us wrong". That, in my opinion, is pure blackmail, and in case such a deal has been offered, it could well be that the FIA
1. does not have a strong case and
2. wants to shovel this under the carpet as quickly as possible in order to cover up their own mistakes, and to prevent a potential investigation into the leak, and or their methods of controlling the results."

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8. Posted by Max Noble, 21/10/2022 0:53

"@Kenji - fully agree with your summary. As I’ve previously noted, Toto and Lewis are still fighting for last year’s championship. If the FIA did exclude RB from the 2021 season for a minor breach… what on Earth is left to punish for a major breach? Dissolve the company, disband the team, and have the drivers, and team principal serve jail terms…??

Best possible outcome is for RB to prove they are inside the cost cap, and hence the entire problem of applying a punishment goes away, and we simply pass the FIA a fresh napkin to wipe (yet another) serve of egg from face…
"

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9. Posted by kenji, 21/10/2022 0:40

"Interesting insofar as the terms of the cost cap were defined, in May 2020, whereby they were split into two categories, minor and major, and delineated by a measurable percentage. It was implied that 'teams could be excluded from the championship' and it is to be presumed that such a dire penalty would've been attached to a 'major' penalty not a minor breach? The financial level of breach, made public, by way of speculation surely doesn't fit with the excess level of alleged spend that would call for championship exclusion, a sanction being championed by certain teams."

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10. Posted by Superbird70, 20/10/2022 23:03

"Bwah ha ha ha!!!"

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Has the FIA offered Red Bull a deal over budget breach?

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