Theres no love lost between Toto Wolff and Christian Horner with the latter thinking of himself as a true racing man while the Mercedes boss’ background is that of a financier. Mercedes had acquired the Brawn team for the 2010 season and under the guide of Ross Brawn the team was making progress.

The recruitment of Lewis Hamilton from his McLaren home for the 2013 title race, demonstrated the team meant business – with Toto Wolff airing on the scene around the same time as Lewis. Niki Lauda completed the top team and was credited in part with persuading Hamilton to leave his boyhood racing family.

 

 

 

Mercedes ruled the roost with the best PU

The rest is history, having developed the uber dominant power unit for the 2014 engine rules change, Mercedes set about winning a record eight consecutive constructor titles and seven drivers’ championships until the fateful day in the Abu Dhabi desert back in December 2021.

Much of that season the two teams and drivers were at each others throats with both Max Verstappen found guilty of taking their arch rival for the drivers’ title out of a race. Now in the ascendency Horner is paying back his rival for the many barbed comments he’s received along the way.

Sebastian Vettel once famously clearly had enough of the podium boos he was receiving in 2013 so in the interview following his victory in Singapore that year said: “Whilst there’s a lot of people hanging their balls in the pool on Fridays, we’re still working very hard and pushing very hard so that we have a strong race.”

This was in response to the criticism that Red Bull and Vettel winning everything were making the sport of Formula One boring. Ow Christian Horner has had another pop at his arch rivals team Mercedes following their performance at this weekends Grand Prix in n Monaco. 

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Red Flag took away pit stops

A first lap crash involving Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen, which also cleaned out the by standing Nico Hulkenberg, meant under the inevitable red flag, the drivers were allowed to switch tyres and try to run to the end of the Grand Prix without stopping – their mandatory one tyre changed having been fulfilled.

The front runners had opted to start own the medium tyre, but Mercedes has Hamilton (P7) and Russell (P5) on the harder tyre. This would last longer and the original plan would have been to run further into the race than Ferrari and McLaren who were on the medium tyre and see if it paid dividends.

Now with the red flag and free change of tyres, Hamilton and Russell were going to have to try and take their medium tyre into the unknown for 77 laps, while the front runners had an easier job on their new harder tyre. When told of the red flag Hamilton moaned on the radio to his crew, “I told you guys, I told you guys.”

Clearly there had been a debate within Mercedes over which tyre to start the race on, and Lewis felt their choice of the hard tyre was clearly wrong. As the race resumed, George Russell was easily keeping up with the front runners when the call from the team came for him to slow down.

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Russell told to drive 4 seconds a lap slower

“Going faster at this stage does not help us at all,” his engineer insisted, though Russell pushed back pointing out if he continued at the reduced pace as instructed, he would open up a free pit stop for the driver ahead – Lando Norris. 

So Russell plodded around getting further and further behind Norris as he controlled the pace to keep his medium tyres alive. Behind him was a frustrated Max Verstappen in a Mercedes sandwich with Lewis Hamilton behind him back in seventh place. The reigning world champion could drive several seconds a lap as he demonstrated following his pit stop for fresh rubber.

Yet while Hamilton also switched rubber, the team failed to tell him how important his out lap was and that the seven times world champion ended to push to the limit to overtake Max. The two drivers came out in the same order and set about quickly chasing down Russells 35 second lead.

Of course Max and Lewis made the time up in a handful of laps, but the infamously narrow circuit proved that even when a car is 2 seconds a lap faster than the one in front, overtaking is nigh on impossible.

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Mercedes are “defeatist”

Christian Horner has now accused Mercedes AMG F1 of being ‘defeatest’ with their race strategy in Monaco and suggests this is because they are not competing for the world championship any more. The Red Bull boss believes they could have been more positive with George Russell who at one points was almost 20 seconds behind Lando Norris, a gap he closed at the end to just 4.

At the recent Japanese Grand Prix, Toto Wolff made a bold claim that they – Mercedes as a team, were closing in on Red Bull. Yet in the race the best Mercedes driver came home 45 seconds behind the winner and in last year’s Grand Prix the same gap was 49 seconds.

A marginal improvement but clearly something Toto Wolff was clinging to. Asked if the teams were getting closer to Red Bull as Wolff had claimed, the Red Bull boss said: “Yeah, I think so. Perhaps not with Mercedes.”

Magnussen angry as Haas make stupid mistake

 

 

 

Mild but continued war of words

“But I think with Ferrari and McLaren certainly look competitive, they cannot be discounted. It’s a long, long championship and obviously they’ve taken a reasonable chunk of points today.

“I didn’t really understand Mercedes’ race today, it was a hugely conservative race by George, to give up so much time and then go so fast at the end of the race, it didn’t really make a lot of sense.

“But I don’t think it would’ve changed…they weren’t going to overtake anybody, it was just a very defeatist race to try and defend fifth.”

Compared to the “Get your own fu*%$ng car sorted out” exchange where Horner became exasperated with Wolff’s demand for regulation changes to fix the bouncing of the cars – this was indeed mild. Yet no doubt given the slightest opportunity, Wolff and Horner will be at loggerheads even if its counting the number of employees Red Bull claim to have stolen from the Mercedes team.

Alpine earthquake Schumacher back in F1

 

 

 

Monaco new race format proposed after ‘boring’ 2024 Grand Pri

Like many of the European Formula One races, the Monaco Grand Prix pre-dates the inauguration of the championship in 1950. The first F1 race to be held in the principality provide a certain Jaun Manuel Fangio with his first victory in the newly formed racing championship but due to budgetary problems along with regulation changes, Monaco was not a regular on the F1 calendar until 1955.

The circuit has remained substantially unchanged since the first race was held around the city in 1929, although the profile of certain corners and the placing of the start finishing line has differed over the years. Yet the streets which wind between the historic buildings in the sparking Cote D’Azure principality define the layout of the track given the properties have been there longer than even the earliest motorsport…. READ MORE