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Christian Horner recently dismissed suggestions made by Lewis Hamilton to tweak the rules to prevent one team from dominating F1. The seven-time British champion expressed the need to regulate when top teams can start developing the car for the year ahead.
Horner believes the British champion spoke through his own experience before dismissing his suggestion. He went on to state that Red Bull might be handicapped due to the wind tunnel penalty and by mid-season a team like Aston Martin would start to feel that.
The Red Bull CEO further stated that their sister team was also given more wind tunnel time than them, which made them use the wind tunnel diligently for the development of their car.
Responding to the suggestion made by Lewis Hamilton, Christian Horner said:
"Well, he’s obviously talking from personal experience. I think it would be an incredibly hard thing to police. How on Earth could you say: right, first of August, go! How do you prevent people from thinking about or working on next year’s cars?"
"We have a handicap system in Formula 1 through the reduction of wind tunnel time that there is," he continued. "Franz has almost double the amount of time that we have – so that is a significant handicap and I think Aston Martin will start to feel that as it’s reset at the mid-point of the year.
"And for us, we have to pick and choose very, very sparingly, what are we going to commit to putting through the wind tunnel. So, it will have an effect, and that system didn’t exist years ago, so we will see that playing, and I think the most important thing, and the history of Formula 1 demonstrates it, is stability."
Christian Horner feels that keeping the regulations as it is will naturally allow the cars to converge in a season or two. However, the Briton believes the 2026 engine regulations overhaul could play a spoiler again to the progress made.
"Not messing with the regulations will always create convergence, and I think it’s just a period of time before… You can see that convergence is already starting to happen, I think," Horner said. "By the time we get to the end of ’25, probably all the teams will be very converged, and then we screw it all up and go again in ’26.”
Toto Wolff dismisses demand made by Lewis Hamilton for a rule change
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes Lewis Hamilton is trying to pressure Red Bull and Max Verstappen off track by demanding for a regulation tweak. The Austrian felt the Briton’s request is not a genuine one and not viable.
Speaking to the on-site media ahead of the Austrian GP, Wolff said:
“Lewis always loves to pressure other’s teams; it was more like a joke. I don’t think what he requests is possible.”
With little to no hope of stopping Max Verstappen from claiming his third title, the dominance has been a reminder of the past for Lewis Hamilton. The Dutchman has now extended his title lead to 81 points over second-placed Sergip Perez.
Verstappen, on the other hand, is 123 points clear of Hamilton, who is currently fourth in the championship points.
