FIA Rejects Williams' Plea Amid $7 Million Crash Fallout
Dec.12 - F1's governing body has turned down a plea from the Williams team.
The James Vowles-led outfit has suffered a perhaps unprecedented string of big crashes recently, not only depleting the spare parts store but also endangering the budget cap spending limit.
"Williams quite simply had more than twice as much damage as the others," former F1 driver Giedo van der Garde told the drs De Race Show podcast.
Vowles admits: "It's a distraction away from '25, there's no doubt about it."
He says the three big crashes at Interlagos alone cost over $5 million, with Franco Colapinto's Las Vegas accident adding another $2m to the bill.
If simply repairing all the damage tips Williams over the cap, teams can 'borrow' from the 2025 budget allocation - but then double the borrowed amount must be accounted for on the bottom line.
"It will be very, very difficult," said Vowles when asked if Williams will be able to stick to the 2024 cap. "It's hard to save as much as we need to somewhere else in the budget until the end of December."
Auto Motor und Sport claims Vowles asked the FIA for a $1 million dispensation for any team after the tenth major crash of a season. The request was turned down.
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Good for FIA to effectively make a point that crashing & consequent damage is the drivers' problem rather than their.
I'd like to know what the actual cap is? $100,000,000? $200,000,000? Somewhere in there, I'm sure they can find the $7 million it takes to recover the costs from the crashes.
Don't they have a 10% contingency line item in their budget? Anyone who has had the 'pleasure' of building their own home knows all about cost over-runs. Crashes are a cost over-run of sorts.
$135M isnt it
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