Red Bull team boss Christian Horner told Motorsport.com that their engine saga had “an awful lot more to it than meets the eye”.
Following their dispute with Renault over their power units performance and reliability Christian Horner and Red Bull began searching for deals with Mercedes, Ferrari or Honda for the 2016 season. Neither of these deals ever came to fruition resulting in Red Bull swallowing its pride and returning to Renault.
Christian Horner was also asked if he was surprised at how hard it was to secure a power unit for the following season: “In the summer there were a lot of discussions. There were agreements between individuals that were later reneged upon, and an awful lot of politics put into play.
“If you are a competitive team, then there is an obvious conflict within that team if you are a supplier [of engines] as well. The engines are the biggest performance differentiator in F1 at the moment, forget drivers and chassis to a degree.
“So you can understand why Mercedes and Ferrari wouldn’t be particularly keen to give their biggest asset to a competitive rival team. They tried very hard at a team level to achieve that.
“But this is where I think perhaps the rules needs looking at. It cannot be right that a group of manufacturers can get together and say, ‘we are happy to see Red Bull go to the wall.’”
Clearly Horner is not happy with how himself and Red Bull were treated by fellow manufactures but the way he went about ending their Renault contract could have been an overriding factor in Mercedes and Ferrari’s decisions. After all no manufacturer wants to be publicly criticised so regularly by one of their customers.
Horner also went on to blame Toto Wolff for the breakdown in negotiations with Mercedes after Red Bull believed they had a deal to use Mercedes engines following a conversation and an informal handshake Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz had with Niki Lauda. This “deal” was overruled by Wolff, after all Lauda is only a non-executive Chairman meaning he has no real decision-making power.
“He [Mateschitz] was involved in the negotiations at the forefront of this, and believed he had a deal,” claimed Horner.
“Dietrich has always worked on handshake qualities, and that is the way he has run his business and run his life.
“I have been around long enough to not be totally surprised. It is a competitive business at the end of the day.
“Niki Lauda tried his hardest to make it happen and unfortunately Toto wasn’t particularly keen to see Mercedes power in the back of a Red Bull car.”
Once again Horner went back to his belief that fellow competitors were scared of supplying Red Bull as they would be beaten thanks to their superb chassis design’s. Red Bull have arguably had the best chassis in Formula One for the last six years, he believed many were worried by what they could achieve in 2016 if they had the best engine.
“Our performance at Spa in the middle sector seemed to spook a few people, around the time we were discussing with Mercedes,” he said. “And our performance in Singapore seemed to totally spook Ferrari.
“So yes, in some ways you are a victim of your own success. But you have to keep fighting and solutions will present themselves.”
To end his ‘rant’ shall we say, Horner made one interesting and very valid point I tend to agree with, whilst the rules are in their current form the sport lends itself to be ruled by the engine manufactures.
“It is part of a bigger issue in Formula 1 – that firstly the power units that we were offered but were not available, some of them were in excess of 30 million Euros.
“Secondly they weren’t available and thirdly you have this massive disparity between the best and the worst. And that doesn’t make the racing any closer.
“So the FIA and the commercial rights holder need to grab a hold of it and come up with a more affordable, available, less-technical engine.”
A lot of people may think this is just Christian Horner ranting because Red Bull are no longer at the top of the tree but if you look at some of his comments he does have a point. The way they behaved towards Renault is not excusable but their issues in finding a competitive engine has highlighted the need for change once again.
