Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has said that the enforced downsizing of the team due to the introduced budget cap, has resulted in having to make 'painful' redundancies. Formula 1 teams are restricted to a budget of $145 million in 2021, as part of the new financial cost cap introduced to the sport in an effort to increase competition across the field. While smaller teams might not have trouble keeping to that cap, bigger teams like Red Bull Racing are having to downsize their operations a little in order to reduce costs. We’ve had to go through the pain of redundancies over the winter," confirmed Horner in Bahrain. "We’ve had to re-size, re-package ourselves and it’s really tough when you’re saying goodbye to members of the team, some of which have been there for 25 years across its different formats so it’s been really been a tough exercise and continues to be a significant challenge, particularly for the bigger teams. "It drives efficiency into the business because it quite simply has to. Head count is your biggest cost. Therefore it has to be as efficient as you can possibly make it." Horner confirmed Red Bull continue to have over 800 staff on their books for 2021, in line with the same amount McLaren have, and around 200 less than what Mercedes have. "I think our numbers are… we’re in the 800s but we have so many activities as well where we supply, for example, a gearbox to AlphaTauri so those manufacturing staff are included within that number."
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