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SINGAPORE — Red Bull boss Christian Horner accused rivals of seeking to take the shine off what could be a title-winning weekend for Formula One leader Max Verstappen by making “hugely defamatory” accusations that his team breached cost cap rules last season.
Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix offers Verstappen a first chance to clinch his second championship but the paddock has been swept by rumors that two of the 10 teams spent more than the $145 million limit in 2021.
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“Is it any coincidence that Max has his first shot at winning (the) title and here we are talking nothing but cost caps, rather than the phenomenal performance that he has had this year,” team principal Horner told reporters.
“I think it’s an underhand tactic that’s been employed to detract from perhaps a lack of performance (by others) on track this year,” added the Briton, who also threatened to take legal action.
“Unless there is a clear withdrawal of those statements we will be taking it incredibly seriously and looking at what the options available to us are.”
Horner’s comments came after Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, whose driver Lewis Hamilton was denied a record-breaking eighth world title by Verstappen last year in a controversial season finale, took aim at Red Bull on Friday.
The Austrian suggested any violation of the budget gap last year would not only have given a team an advantage in 2021 but also for this year and 2023.
The sport’s governing body FIA on Friday said it was still vetting the accounts of all teams with the process set to conclude on Wednesday.
Horner said submission of accounts was a confidential process between teams and the FIA and suggestions that Red Bull were in breach were “bang out of order.”
“We don’t even know if we’re in breach, we don’t even know until next week, until the process has been completed,” he said.
“So perhaps when these accusations are made, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Formula One introduced a budget cap last season to level the playing field between the richer and smaller teams and move the sport onto a financially stable footing.
Horner said policing the cap was “an elephant for the FIA to get their arms around.”
A breach, depending on its magnitude, can attract a range of penalties from public reprimands and fines to a deduction of championship points and even exclusion from the championship.
Bigger teams, used to spending hundreds of millions every year, have had to make significant cutbacks to meet the spending rules, which have been set at $140 million for this season and will drop to $135 million in 2023.
Wolff on Friday said Mercedes had made as many as 40 employees redundant to meet the demands of the budget cap.
Red Bull had let more than 90 people go, Horner responded on Saturday. (Reporting by Abhishek Takle; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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