Red Bull "below the cap" says Horner as F1 teams await FIA findings

Christian Horner has declared himself "very confident" about Red Bull's budget cap submission handed into the FIA as he addressed rumours of a potential breach.

Speculation has surfaced ahead of this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix that two teams - claimed to be Red Bull and Aston Martin - had gone beyond the $145million cost limit imposed on all teams for last season.

The FIA is due to release its findings in the coming days, with compliance certificates issued to those teams found to have worked below the cap throughout 2021.

Should any team have breached the cap, with anything less than five per cent - $7.25m - deemed a 'minor' infringement, then the FIA does have a range of sanctions available at its disposal.

Asked on Sky Sports F1 whether he was aware of any breaches, Horner said: "I'm certainly not aware of any.

"The accounts were all submitted back in March so it's been a long process with the FIA, going through them, and we're in that process as we speak.

"They're rightly following that process, and I think mid-next week is when they declare their certificates.

"Our submission was below the cap, and it's down to the FIA to follow their process, which they are currently doing."

Horner has highlighted, however, the complicated nature of the process for the FIA and the grey areas that have arisen.

"It's a brand-new set of regulations, and a very complicated set of regulations, so how rules are applied is going to be subjective between the teams, and inevitably, as years go by, things will get tidied up," added Horner.

"We have to remember this is the first time this [a budget cap] has ever happened.

"We do our due diligence, we get audited anyway, it's a similar process to that of working with an auditor, so it's slightly bespoke to Formula 1.

"Clarifications have been coming even after the submissions were made so you can see immature the process is, but the FIA have obviously been working hard on it and doing the best they can.

"Every team is theoretically subjected to it so they would have looked at every team's submitted accounts, they're following a process and that conclusion date has been moved from July to September, and now to October.

"It's a big job, a lot for them to get through."

As to whether he was confident Red Bull had not breached the cap, he replied: "We're very confident in our submissions.

"Anything different to that, then obviously we will wait to hear from the FIA.

"The FIA are in a process, and there are always going to be rumours. I've heard of major breaches but I'm certainly not aware of that."

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