Christian Horner still angry with Ferrari

Red Bull did not fail to show its annoyance when Ferrari announced the recruitment of Laurent Mekies, who was in charge of safety and the FIA’s deputy race director.

Christian Horner took advantage of the first press conference of the season to repeat that he was upset by the choice made by Scuderia: « For me, it’s very important because what is disappointing in there is that we have the Strategy Group where the FIA, FOM, and all the team principals were present to discuss the Marcin problem (Editor’s note: Budkowski), which had created a strong controversy since a key member of the FIA was moving to a team, which was Renault at the time. »

During this meeting, the Red Bull leader claims that everyone around the table agreed on a 12-month transition period between leaving the FIA and joining a team. However, this meeting did not happen very long ago: « What is disappointing is that this meeting took place less than six weeks ago. There were certainly discussions at that time. This makes these meetings almost useless if we can’t agree and then act. Obviously, you can hide behind “It’s not in the regulations.” but as a group, we had agreed. This was not respected. This raises the question of the point of these meetings. »

Maurizio Arrivabene, the director of Ferrari, did not hesitate to show his annoyance regarding his opponent’s remarks and limited himself to reminding that the decision made at the end of said meeting was that the FIA lawyer should get back to the teams with specific guidelines at the next meeting, which is scheduled for April 17.

Toto Wolff sought to defuse the controversy by stating that since Laurent Mekies was involved with safety and not the technical secrets of the teams, it did not pose any particular problems for him. However, he took the opportunity to reiterate that everything must be written down and that gentlemen’s agreements do not work in a competitive environment like F1: « It is clear that the current governance and the way rules are defined do not work well. There are too many different opinions, and we need to find a solution for 2021 for the best interest of the sport. The debate we had a minute ago clearly shows that there must be strict rules to have a common legal basis for battling on the track. If there are no rules and it’s not written in the regulations, it doesn’t work. »

In the background, it’s obviously the negotiations around the upcoming Concorde Agreements that are looming. As each team is naturally keen to defend its own interests, it is the responsibility of the FIA and Liberty Media to impose rules and a distribution of the sport’s profits. The teams are then free to accept or reject them.

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr