Off course not. There isn't even a real budget cap. Top teams like Mercedes , Red Bull & Ferrari are spending just or almost as much as they did before but people / fans / journalists don't even realise this.
So many things are kept outside the budget cap: accounting, marketing, cleaning staff, catering, transportation etcetera...
If you look at the budgets and number of staff of the three top teams: it hardly changed, they still spend around 300 million or more and not 145 (which has already been raised to almost 150) as they claim. They hide costs under different parts of the book keeping also.
Note that he budget cap is only for racing / development costs!!! Note that the top teams have hardly let staff go. With Mercedes the staff number just dropped from around 1070 to 1011 or something like that so still ridiculously high.
The smaller teams, like Haas , Williams Sauber or spending maximum 145 million IN TOTAL, it's their total budget. With the top teams they spend 145 million on Research & Development and the actual racing (including car damage repairs). So they still outspend the other teams at least double or tripple!
The budget cap is not really there. And still Red Bull found it necessary to cheat despite of this.
The budget cap should be the TOTAL budget and not just R&D and racing. Besides how can you claim that accounting is not part of the racing activity because the business activity of a team is... racing so everything relates to it in some way.
It's also odd how many people, more people, suddenly work in accounting or marketing at the top teams... Almost as if they put an engineer as working in catering, in accounting or marketing in the documents they supply to the FIA....
This is all a bad joke. Why do people think the top teams eventually agreed to the budget cap? Because in reality there isn't a real budget cap, it's a smoke screen.
Edited by William Hunt, 15 November 2022 - 16:33.