Zak Brown took a shot at McLaren’s rivals Red Bull at the Miami Grand Prix with a message taped to the side of his drinking bottle, to which Christian Horner has now responded
Christian Horner has said increased scrutiny over McLaren and their cars is “inevitable” as they dominate the Formula 1 season. His comment came after McLaren boss Zak Brown took an indirect dig at his Red Bull counterpart with a message on his water bottle at the Miami Grand Prix.
The American was seen by TV cameras taking a swig from a bottle with ‘Tire Water’ taped to the side. It was a reference to an accusation faced by his team that it may be illegally using water to cool its tyres to help lower degradation of the rubber.
Mario Isola, head of racing at F1 tyre supplier Pirelli, said it would be “very easy” to inject water into tyres for this reason but insisted that he had seen no evidence of McLaren or any other team employing that technique.
Asked about Brown’s cheeky dig, Horner last Friday jokingly offered to send a can of Red Bull to the McLaren boss the next time he needed a drink. And when asked about it after Sunday’s Miami race he said: “In Formula 1, there are always going to be questions that are raised.
“They did exactly the same about the front suspension in our car last year. So it’s inevitable when you’re running at the front as we have for the last few years, you always come under more scrutiny. That’s part and parcel of Formula 1.
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“In many respects, for the FIA, the teams, all of the teams, do the vast majority of the work, because their resource is far greater and there’s always a competitor analysis going on across all of the teams. That’s just part of Formula 1.”
Red Bull never confirmed that they were the ones who complained to the FIA about McLaren possibly using water to cool their tyres. And Brown did not name Horner’s team directly as he made a serious point in the wake of his light-hearted stunt about how teams go about protesting each other’s innovations anonymously.
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Suggesting teams accusing others should have to offer a “meaningful” fee when making a complaint, the American said: “[The water bottle] was poking fun at a serious issue, which is teams have historically made allegations of other teams. Most recently, one team focuses on that strategy more than others.
“There’s a proper way to protest a team at the end of the race, and you have to make it formal, disclose where it comes from, put some money down. I think that process should be extended to all allegations to stop the frivolous allegations which are intended only to be a distraction.
“So if you had to put up some money and put on paper and not backchannel what your allegations are, I think that would be a way to clean up the bogus allegations that happened in this sport, which are not very sporting.
“And if someone does believe there’s a technical issue, by all means you’re entitled to it. Put it on paper, put your money down. It should come against your cost cap if it turns out you’re wrong, and I think that will significantly stop the bogus allegations that come from some teams in the sport.”