Team bosses shoot down idea of a regulatory intervention to slow down Red Bull

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner remained unbothered by any regulatory intervention to slow down their team dominance. Speaking in the press conference ahead of the 2023 Italian GP, the Briton felt that with the next regulations overhaul in 2026, he expects the cars on the grid to fully converge.

Lewis Hamilton suggested that rule changes in the past that slowed down Mercedes impacted their performance bunched up the grid. In 2020 their qualifying mode was removed and by 2021 the DAS (Dual Asis steering wheel) was banned by the FIA.

When Horner was asked by Sportskeeda if he was worried about any such regulatory intervention in the future to slow down their dominance, the Briton doubted the possibility.

Answering Sportskeeda’s question, the Red Bull chief replied:

“Well, look, regulations are pretty stable. We have three sets of regulations now: Technical, Sporting and Financial. The Technical and Sporting playing fields seem to be reasonably content. The Financial one, there seems to be a little bit of manoeuvring now and again on. But I think that regulations are stable for the next couple of years. And we fully expect our competitors… I mean, look at the jump that McLaren made recently. We fully expect there to be convergence, you know, even this year, before we head into 2024.”

He added:

“I'm not aware of any draconian, significant regulation changes in the pipeline. We have that already for 2026, which will be a complete reset. Despite the fact that we've done a lot of winning this year, a lot of the races, including the last race, [have been] pretty entertaining. Or certainly, from where we were sitting, [Zandvoort] was. So yeah, I don't think that the sport is lacking entertainment at this point in time.”

The FIA are proposing a technical directive to ban some teams using flexible elements on their wings to improve their performance. Although Red Bull are unbothered by it, Horner felt that there wont be any regulatory changes on the sporting and technical side.

While the financial regulations seemed to be still tweaked, the Briton felt that they expect their competitors to catch up to them. Citing McLaren’s performance leap as a clear example, he believes that it is possible teams could catch up with their pace by the end of the 2023 season.

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Ferrari and McLaren are against any rule tweaks to slowdown the Red Bull

Backing the Red Bull boss’ statements in the press conference Frederic Vasseur and Andrea Stella felt it wont be correct to make any artificial tweaks to rules. The Ferrari boss felt that it wasn’t the DNA of Formula 1 to artificially try and balance the performance on the grid, while the McLaren team principal felt they wanted to beat Red Bull on merit and not with any assistance.

Asked by Sportskeeda if it were fair if a rule change were to be brought in to slow down Red Bull, Vasseur said:

“I'm not a big fan of the balance of performance or any kind of artifice like this, it's not the DNA at all of Formula 1. And on the top, we have already the wind tunnel allocation, with a kind of balance, not balance of performance but balance of allocation and it's enough.”

Responding to the same question, Stella added:

“Yeah, I agree. We don't want to have any help. We want to close the gap by our own means. And we like this challenge. And that's what we want for the next couple of years.”

With viewership dropping and increasing pressure on the sport to produce more racing and entertainment, F1 finds itself in a tough spot with a dominating Max Verstappen and unstoppable Red Bull.

Many would argue that the Milton Keynes team did not take a huge leap forward, but this rivals Ferrari and Mercedes taking a step back created the gap in performance.

The fight for second place in the championship has got exciting with Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari. McLaren and Alpine taking a leap forward have only added into spicing up the fight in the midfield.