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Red Bull’s Christian Horner has admitted the team have already been “limited significantly” due to its cost cap penalty.
The FIA fined Red Bull $7million and reduced their wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) time over 2023 after the team were found guilty of minorly overspending in the 2021 season.
Ahead of the new season, team principal Horner admitted the penalty has hurt Red Bull’s car development.
“We’re probably 25% almost of the way through that penalty, and of course it has an effect,” Horner told Racer.
“It’s limiting significantly, the amount of runs that we can do in our wind tunnel over each quarter. And I think that the team are they’re having to adapt to that.
“And it just means you have to be a bit more focused, and more disciplined in what we put through the testing process within the tunnel or within our simulation tools.”
Last year Red Bull had their most dominant season since 2013, with the team picking up 17 wins out of 22 races.
A total of 15 belonged to Max Verstappen, who went onto win his second world title in 2022.
Despite Horner admitting the cost cap penalty is a “handicap”, he said the team are working hard to overcome the challenge.
He added: “It’s another challenge. And it’s a handicap for sure, coming into this year, but we’ve got very capable people that are looking to obviously extract the best that we possibly can and apply ourselves in the most efficient and effective way.”