Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is confident that his team's 2022 expenditures complied with Formula 1's $140 million cost cap but admitted that he can't be "100% sure".
Last October, the FIA revealed that its financial audit of Red Bull's accounts had identified a "minor overspend" by the team relative to its $145 million budget.
The team initially denied there had been any transgression, according to its own interpretation of F1's financial regulations.
However, Red Bull Racing eventually acknowledged its fault and accepted to pay a hefty $7 million fine. But the Milton Keynes-based outfit was also hit with a 10 per cent reduction of its aerodynamic development hours, a sporting penalty that Horner qualified as "draconian" at the time.
Teams will soon submit there 2022 accounts to the FIA who will once again sift through the numbers to verify each outfit's compliance, with results expected to be communicated in the second half of the F1 season, but hopefully earlier than late October, as was the case last year.
Horner vouched for his team's 2022 budget, but admitted that its conformity would remain in doubt until the FIA deems its account compliant.
"You could never be 100% sure," the Red Bull chief told Auto Motor und Sport.
"But certainly [after] all the aspects that were a reason for us to be over in 2021, which remember it was a very first year of a set of very complicated regulations, we’re confident that we should be comfortably within the cap."
Horner pointed to the "significantly less" development undertaken by the team in 2022 as well as to lower crash damage as reasons that lead him to believe that costs will come in below the $140 million threshold under the scrutiny of the FIA.
"For 2022, the amount of development we did – and particularly crash damage that we had – was significantly less.
"So, until you’ve got the certificate [of compliance], nothing is 100%. But I’d be very surprised if we weren’t fully within the cap."
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