Zak Brown is hoping for a more positive relationship between McLaren and Red Bull following the departure of Christian Horner, who was let go by the Austrian team.
The American has already met with Laurent Mekies, Horner’s successor, to try to reset the tone between the teams. They’ll always be rivals on track, but Brown is hoping to move past the constant back-and-forth that had become routine off it.
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Brown has already met with Laurent Mekies, Horner’s replacement, in the hope of a fresh start. The two teams will always be competitors on track, but the McLaren CEO wants to end a pattern of off-track barbs.
Aside from one rear-wing modification following discussions with the FIA, McLaren have consistently been found fully compliant with regulations. Still, Red Bull haven’t let up on their suggestions that McLaren might be bending or even breaking rules since losing their grip as F1’s top team.
Red Bull accused McLaren of altering garages and tyre setups
Horner took his investigation to another level, with Red Bull even using thermal imaging cameras during a pit stop to check their tyre temperatures.
The FIA later received a detailed letter from Red Bull outlining various suspicions about McLaren’s cooling methods, questioning their legality.
A recent video from The Race has brought some of those claims into the open, including suggestions that McLaren had quietly altered their tyre construction.
“McLaren began exposing Red Bull’s struggle to improve their car’s inherent balance issues,” Scott Mitchell-Malm recounted. “Horner’s team started to point fingers at what other factors could be behind that.”
“It started putting pressure on the FIA to intervene over excessive front and rear-wing flexing, then it moved on to theories about McLaren finding ways to cool its tyres by adding water inside the wheel, or even benefiting from a sneaky tyre construction change.”
“There was no evidence of this being true, and this was quietly recanted by Red Bull after the season ended.”
Mitchell-Malm added: “Zak Brown thinks Red Bull crossed a line here, with a host of questions about design ideas and procedures related to tyre cooling that pertained to the use of gases within the tyre, the heating or cooling of a garage to potentially influence the temperatures of the car, and multiple ideas for very specific, almost entirely illegal, tyre cooling trickery.”
Red Bull bosses didn’t like Christian Horner’s relationship with Zak Brown
Horner played up to his role as the ‘pantomime villain’ by taking shots at Brown in the media, and the McLaren boss didn’t hold back in firing back. The back-and-forth was well-known, but it wasn’t just a personal feud – it reflected broader tensions between the teams.
Red Bull wasn’t happy with how public the clashes became, believing they were bad for the team’s reputation. There’s a feeling they might prefer Mekies to take a different approach and build better bridges across the paddock.
Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren seem to have good working relationships, while Red Bull have often found themselves on the outside looking in. Mekies, coming from an engineering background, is seen as less confrontational than Horner. But he’s also stepping into a bigger spotlight now, so it remains to be seen how his approach evolves.
The edge McLaren has over their rivals may not come down to any one thing but rather an accumulation of small gains. Their new wind tunnel and updated simulator have helped them make steady progress through regular upgrades – something other teams have struggled to match.
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