Williams fined for breaching F1's financial regulations

The Williams team has been fined $25,000 by the FIA for a procedural breach of Formula 1’s financial regulations.

The sport's governing body sanctioned the British outfit for failing to file its 2021 financial reports by the 31 March 2022 deadline as required by the sport's financial regulations.

"On 12 April 2022, the Cost Cap Administration notified Williams that it had committed a Procedural Breach,” stated the FIA on Tuesday.

"On 15 April 2022, Williams responded to the notification accepting that it had committed a Procedural Breach and explaining the steps that it had taken to seek to avert that breach.

"Having considered Williams’ explanation and given in particular that the Procedural Breach was voluntarily disclosed by Williams in advance of the Full Year Reporting Deadline of 31 March 2022 and Williams has been fully cooperative in seeking to remedy the breach, the Cost Cap Administration deemed it appropriate to offer Williams an ABA resolving the breach on the terms set out below. That offer was accepted by Williams.

"The Cost Cap Administration confirms that, as of the date hereof, Williams has within the specified deadline remediated the Procedural Breach, paid the Financial Penalty, and bore the costs incurred by the Cost Cap Administration in connection with the preparation of the ABA."

• Steiner: F1 teams must make budget cap work 'one way or another'

Regarding this year's $140 million budget cap threshold, those teams running close to the cost limit have urged the FIA to increase the latter, in order to take into account rampant inflation, higher energy and freight costs and global supply chain issues that have eaten into the teams' budgets.

Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren have all requested a change while the sport's smaller teams are against any increase of the $140 million limit.

However, there are also questions over the penalty that would be levied upon those teams that overrun the threshold by 5% or less, which would constitute a "minor" breach.

"I think all the major teams are going to breach that $140m cap this year," said Red Bull chief Christian Horner. "But what is the penalty for a minor breach?

"What we don't want to do is end up is playing a game of chicken as to say, do you go for 4.9 per cent over, do we go for 4.7%? And that could be one upgrade: that could be the differentiating factor of this world championship.

"I think what we do need is clarity and clarity quickly."

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