Top team principals Christian Horner and Mattia Binotto have called for the budget cap to be raised due to factors such as rising inflation.

The Budget cap that was announced in the autumn of 2019 was initially set at $175 million but was later reduced by 35 million in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that cost the teams and the sport millions.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent rise in living costs have put the teams under significant financial and sporting pressures, with some teams now forced to bring fewer spare parts to races and reuse some parts.

This unexpected turn of events, as well as a rise in the cost of freight, has forced Binotto to admit in today’s FIA press conference, of which MotorLAT were in attendance, that Ferrari would have to go over the cap’s limit.

“I think that there will be no way for us simply to stay within budget, so I am pretty sure some things we will go over. In the regulations, there is a threshold of 5%, and if you do not exceed the 5% on top of what’s the budget cap’s threshold, it could be considered a minor breach in case of force majeure. Many teams will breach it, and I think that will be simply bad for the financial regulations.”

Horner agreed with his Ferrari counterpart, arguing that the rest of the sport shouldn’t be held to ransom by a couple of teams.

“Just to clear up a couple of comments attributing to missing races, I think what I was trying to point out last weekend was it would be the equivalent of missing numerous races to get the costs under the cap, and I think certainly all the major teams are going to breach that 140 cap.

"Now what we don’t want to end up doing is playing a game of chicken as to say does he go to 4.9 over, do we go 4.7 over, and that being one upgrade being the differentiating factor in this World championship. So what I think we do need is clarity and quickly because, quite simply, it’s not right to be held to ransom by a couple of teams who aren’t perhaps affected as that wasn’t the design of the budget cap; the budget cap was there to limit the top teams from a spending frenzy.”

“None of us could predict when we came up with the budget cap that the figures would be reduced by $30m when they were originally set during the pandemic and when we sat down and read those figures, nobody could even contemplate world events that are driving inflation and we don’t even know what that inflation’s going to be in the second half of the year.

"We’re all seeing the cost of living rising; we’re all seeing utility bills going through the roof; where is that going to go in the next six months so we do need the FIA to take early action on this because we’re coming up to the mid-year point and theirs only so much you can do, and I think we have a responsibility to our employees as well, we reorganised we reshaped we had to say goodbye to many long time employees through redundancies last year to get down to the point that was constant with the cap before inflation came along and I don’t think it’s right that the pressure should be put on mass redundancies in the sport.

“So hopefully, common sense will prevail it is a force majeure situation it’s a situation that none of us could have foreseen that drove these costs up and pragmatically, we need to come to a common-sense solution.”