F1 News: FIA Clamps Down On Teams To Stop Hidden Development

To ensure compliance with the cost cap rules, the FIA has stepped up its vigil lately with regard to special project divisions happening outside of Formula 1. The governing body suspects that these 'special projects' were used to improve performance secretly.

Technical projects like Mercedes's Applied Science, McLaren's Applied Technologies, Aston Martin's Performance Technologies, and Red Bull's Advanced Technology have been running in recent years for further research and development in grand prix racing.

Not only R&D, but these project entities also sell solutions to other businesses involving road cars, bicycles, and yachts. However, suspicion arose that the projects were passing on this knowledge to their respective teams outside of the cost cap.

FIA has revised its technical directive to make it clear that the teams will not be allowed to import any form of intellectual property from projects that are not within the boundaries of Formula 1 unless it falls under the cost cap.

The Technical Directive TD45 states that teams are free to run special project divisions but any form of imported intellectual property into the team must be accounted for under the cost cap.

However, knowledge about Formula 1 can be passed on to technical projects so that it can be utilized for non-business interests.

While FIA has not given out a formal statement, a leading source with good knowledge of the situation has told Motorsport.com that the technical directive has already made its impact on the teams. He said:

“It’s had an impact. Some have been forced to act because they realized what they were doing is no longer allowed.

But the difficult part is they will have been doing it since January 1 (when the TD declared a cut off point), so they will have had a spend up until this point that they now need to address and somehow claw back.”

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer threw light on how it was being done. He said:

“I think what some of the other teams are now doing, the bigger teams, is they're looking to exploit or have a better understanding of where there's some loopholes or some organisational changes you can make to actually stuff more people under that budget cap. And we're not there yet."

“They're looking at: ‘I got rid of 100 people, but now I want to hire them back’. They can find spots for them, where they either don't count as a whole person or they do some marketing stuff or whatever it is, or they work on a boat for some of the time.”

The FIA has been adopting various ways to investigate finances. It has also come to light that the body has been visiting team factories in recent weeks for financial analysis.

The latest questionnaire from FIA regarding compliance consists of over 100 questions, a number that is much higher than what it was a year ago. Only last year, Red Bull was fined $7 million with a reduction in wind tunnel testing time for an overspeeding incident from 2021!