Toto Wolff has strongly denied that Mercedes is one of three teams rumored to be facing additional inquiries by the FIA over last year’s cost ceiling budget.
The FIA denies it, according to whispers, but it amounts to three teams potentially going overboard when it came to last year’s budget cap, leading to the release of a report on 2022 spending. was delayed.
Although he has not been accused of exceeding the limit, the FIA is asking additional questions in his books.
Toto Wolff says everyone at Mercedes is ‘one unit’
One of them relates to staffing and teams using non-F1 personnel to work on F1 jobs and thus keeping them off the books using their expertise.
F1’s powerhouse teams; Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari as well as Aston Martin, who have outside projects such as Le Mans, Valkyrie and the America’s Cup, have found their names being discussed.
Wolff, however, has denied that Mercedes has acted this way, saying everyone at Mercedes belongs as “one unit”.
When asked by Motorsport.com how ‘hard’ it was for the FIA to police the cap, the motorsport boss told Motorsport.com: “I think very hard because some of the bigger teams have different projects, commercial and non-commercial. There are thousands of people in commercial projects.”
“With us, it is a bit easier as we have everything in one unit. So you can see that all the employees are in one place, and you can see where it’s credited or not. It gets more complicated when you have different types of subsidiaries.”
He called for a rethink on 2026, saying: “I’ve never been ashamed to say that with the 2026 rules, we should get rid of all of this altogether.”
With concerns over teams operating in gray areas, the FIA introduced a technical directive, TD45, which states that any ‘intellectual property’ used by affiliated projects outside F1 must now be included in the cost cap budget. Will be done.
However, this will be effective only from 1 January 2023.
Wolff admits that while Mercedes’ F1 side can earn extra money by using one of its team members on outside projects, it is no longer allowed.
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“In the real world, it is quite challenging because we are making revenue and money from our engineering projects,” he said.
“This means we cannot employ someone working in F1 in non-F1 for a minute. But I think the right thing to say for the sport is: it’s F1, it’s not F1.
“And the moment someone spends 10 seconds on an F1 project, they absolutely have to be in F1. This is definitely the path we need to go on.”
Last year, Red Bull was found guilty of breaching the cost cap for 2021 by spending an excess of $2.2 million. Drivers’ championship winners were fined $7 million for this, while also losing 10 percent of their ATR time for the 2022 season.
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Source: www.planetf1.com
