Cost cap loopholes

[A13EX_f]

We all know formula 1 loves a rule loophole... Read the rules once and read them again to see what's not mentioned.

With this in mind, I wonder if any teams are using clever loopholes to stay under the cost cap. Drivers / top 3 staff pay is not covered so are some teams overpaying their drivers and senior staff and then the driver pays for certain things such as their trainer/physio. Team manager pays for meals out for team members rather than the team itself?

What are people's thoughts? if anything like this does happen it makes a joke out of the cost cap as it costs them more due to the tax paid on the salary effectively being paid twice.

[AR3-GP]

You make an interesting point about the driver's "entourage". Are they team staff? Or personal staff? Would a family member who follows a driver around and does "assistant" duties have to be paid? Or could driver give the family member a "Christmas present" at the end of the year?

I also wonder about sleights of hand with third party consultancies and race teams in other categories: Mclaren Applied Science. Mercedes Applied Science. Red Bull Technologies. Ferrari Hypercar program.

These third parties can invest in and develop technology which is tangentially related to F1. They can train engineers before those engineers become salaried F1 team personnel. Mechanics can go practice pit stops while working for a hypercar team or an indycar team. All sorts of sleight of hand to lower expenses for the human resources and the technology is possible and you can be sure that every team is doing what they can to take advantage of that.

Why pay interns for the first 3 months when they are unfamiliar with the organization and are unproductive? Send them to the Le Mans program or the Indycar team to get experience. That will earn them a massive head start on your organization's best practices before they become salaried F1 personnel.

[yamahasho]

They all must cheat, just have the top earners open a corporation under another corporation name out of country, very hard to trace back. And hire a bunch of aerodynamicists which all F1 really is. So easy to transport simulation data.

The FIA should own the simulation software and hand out licenses to monitor time spent. Engineers could get around licenses as well, reverting to old key card licenses is better.

How many car companies, universities own a wind tunnel and have a Formula SAE team. And can get data to teams, almost impossible to stop this.

The FIA should have incentives for whistleblowers because that’s all that the FIA has to catch people. But society ostracizes whistleblowers and this deters others from being a snitch.

But is the cost cap a joke? Certainly caught Mercedes out this year, so maybe it does work.

[Stu]

This is all very cynical, I asked just such a question (as in the OP) when the whole budget cap ‘thing’ initially blew up. There are some very obvious ways to dodge the cap if you look in the right areas. Some very woolly wording in places (apply a fair & reasonable cost to…) makes it really easy to subvert the intention of the rules. There are 10 teams on the grid, three got caught out (and have had a penalty served on them for it); that only really means the other seven didn’t get caught out. All of the teams are looking for any unfair advantage that can be gained, that is at the very heart of F1.

[mrluke]

To an extent I feel like the cost cap is partly policed by the teams. While i'm sure the FIA have a fantastic set of accountants and auditors to review it all, the principle of it has been bought into by all the teams and it probably forms the basis for their board approval (some more than others).

While all the teams look for every advantage, this is different, the consequences have a larger PR impact and risk teams being labelled as cheats, not just by the public but by their peers.

[Big Tea]

To an extent I feel like the cost cap is partly policed by the teams. While i'm sure the FIA have a fantastic set of accountants and auditors to review it all, the principle of it has been bought into by all the teams and it probably forms the basis for their board approval (some more than others).

While all the teams look for every advantage, this is different, the consequences have a larger PR impact and risk teams being labelled as cheats, not just by the public but by their peers.

Toto said a while back ( when the overspend came to light first ) that accountants from all the teams meet together monthly, so there is bound to be some prying or asking for 'clarification' on some items.

The old saying is if two people are keeping a secret, one has to be dead.