The recent budget cap infringements against the Red Bull and Aston Martin have been the talk of the town at the Singapore Grand Prix. Even though the media has been more focused on the Bulls, their team principal, Toto Wolff, has already refuted all the accusations. Now, the British company has also expressed their “surprise” at the claims.
The team principal of Aston Martin, Mike Krack, has revealed his annoyance over the situation, because they have done nothing wrong. As the accusation was made when the Singapore GP was around the corner, Mike has admitted that it is frustrating to start the weekend like this, because it is important to keep focus during that time.
From their point of view, it was fortunate that they were not the only ones with the allegation, as most of the attention was on the other side of the paddock. He acknowledged, “It is unfortunate that these things come out like that, but it’s F1.”
Aston Martin has allegedly gone over their budget cap, as they have recently spent a lot of money recruiting members with bigger salary offers. Nonetheless, the Luxembourgish have retorted that claim by saying, “This is typical paddock, the best defence is attack.” He stated, “I think at the end of the day, we must not forget, we are significantly less people than most teams are.”
Krack has also acknowledged that accusations as such should be done after the FIA has already published their reports after auditing. This is a process where the teams hand in the report, the FIA analyzes it, and then they come back with questions. Since the discussion is still ongoing, they are unable to predict the outcome of this process.
When asked if they made any errors in the report, Krack explained: “I’m not aware of that, I don’t think so. As I will say, there were some questions that our finance people had to answer. We just have to wait and see what the outcome will be. But we don’t worry about it.”
The FIA will publish their analysis of all the teams’ budgets today. With the result, we will know for certain if the accusations are true or not.
