Kees van de Grint has disagreed with Christian Horner’s budget cap idea for Formula 1.
F1 and the FIA had announced a $145 million budget cap this season. The budget includes damages suffered by teams due to crashes and other racing incidents. This has been greeted with resentment by Red Bull and Ferrari. They believe it is not fair that they have to pay for damages caused by other teams.
Horner suggested that damages caused by other teams should be paid by the team at fault. Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto agreed with Horner. However, McLaren is a team in favour of the budget gap. And now, van de Grint has disagreed with Horner and Red Bull.
As he stated in the RTLGP Slipstream, van de Grint said, “Then you become like the Dutch government (on the lawmaking procedure).
“If we make it a law, we will make an exception again. It has always been like that. Why does that have to change? It is a good thing that we have a budget cap, but as team manager you have to take into account that you have some material damage.”
Ruining the sport
Van de Grint asserts that damage should not be left outside the budget cap. He suggested that making rules like damages being paid by the team at fault takes away from the essence of racing, and disagreed with Horner again.
“They would be straying so far from the essence of racing. In the past you also had insurances. Of course they were quite expensive, but they can do that too, can’t they?” the former tyre specialist concluded.
The debate will rage on, especially given how nature of damages are often subjective. For example, some crashes are disgustingly lopsided in faults, while others are entirely accidental.
Read more: “Hurts the budget”: Due to Mazepin spins, Steiner reveals team has pondered ‘fixed accident budget’