- Red Bull fined US$7m for budget cap breach
- Unnamed team said transgression brings sponsor's brand image into ‘disrepute’
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has accused a rival Formula One team of using “underhand” tactics to attempt to prise a sponsor away from the current world championship leaders.
In October last year, Red Bull were found guilty of a minor breach of the International Automobile Federation (FIA)'s financial regulations. As the only team to breach regulations designed to redress the competitive balance in the series and give smaller teams a chance to catch up, this transgression was not taken lightly.
The team denied knowingly breaching the limit, but signed an agreement with the FIA accepting the overspend and were fined US$7 million. The team also received a ten per cent reduction in aerodynamic testing for the following 12 months.
In the aftermath of Red Bull's budget cap breach, Horner says an unnamed team reportedly tried to use the controversy to their commercial advantage.
“These things get used by your rivals,” Horner told the I newspaper, in reference to the team's overspend. “We had one of them contacting our sponsors and partners making suggestions that we would be bringing their brands into disrepute. That was just underhand.”
Red Bull have a number of lucrative partnerships, including a five-year, US$300 million title sponsorship deal with Oracle, and are one of the most commercially successful teams in the paddock.