Red Bull crying foul after Canadian GP underlined the need for bigger F1 protest fees

During the Miami Grand Prix weekend, Zak Brown took aim at the current mechanisms for triggering a protest in the current Formula 1 regulations. His opinion was admittedly more pointed towards protests of a technical nature, contextualised by his response to allegations (albeit nothing formalised) that McLaren was managing its tyre temperatures through less than legal means.

It was suggested by another team that McLaren was using water to keep its tyres cool. This remains unproven, even with in-depth post-race checks (where the cars are subject to "extensive physical inspections") to Piastri's car after that Miami weekend. Perhaps the team in question took umbrage that the purported cooling system wasn't using a sweeter, fizzier, caffeinated liquid...either way, Brown poked fun at it with his own drinks bottle on the pitwall, labelled with caption "tire water!" along the sides.

Although this was the situation to which Brown was referring in his Miami comments, his idea could generally be applied to all kinds of protests beyond simply those of a technical slant.

"[The water bottle] was poking fun at a serious issue, which is teams have historically made allegations of other teams. Most recently, one team focuses on that strategy more than others," Brown said.

"There's a proper way to protest a team at the end of the race, and you have to make it formal, disclose where it comes from, put some money down. I think that process should be extended to all allegations to stop the frivolous allegations which are intended only to be a distraction."

Although teams currently have to submit a €2000 fee to lodge a protest, Brown added that this sum should be greater to ensure teams genuinely have to think twice about committing to any formal objections.

"So if you had to put up some money and put on paper and not backchannel what your allegations are, I think that would be a way to clean up the bogus allegations that happened in this sport, which are not very sporting," he said. "And if someone does believe there's a technical issue, by all means you're entitled to it. Put it on paper, put your money down.

Brown raised a debate over F1 protest fees earlier this season

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

"It should come against your cost cap if it turns out you're wrong. It needs to be meaningful from a 'I'm choosing to spend money on that instead of my own racing car' [point of view]. We're all right at the limit of the budget cap; I know we will not waste a dollar on anything that we don't think brings performance. So that's probably 25 grand. Would I spend 25,000 on a distraction tactic or develop my own race car? I'd spend it on my race car all day long, so I think it needs to be.

"It doesn't need to be hundreds of thousands. But it needs to be meaningful enough that you're taking away performance you could be spending on your car, about having to make it so that they go through the proper channels, to make sure these aren't just allegations. There's something serious that gets investigated."

Those comments were very much in this writer's mind when Red Bull submitted its protest against George Russell's victory. Behind the end-of-race safety car, there was a brief moment of contention when Russell braked on the back straight - which meant that Max Verstappen's nose was very briefly ahead. Russell reported that Verstappen "had overtaken under the safety car", while Verstappen contended that the Mercedes driver had brake-tested him. But, as nothing appeared in the usual investigation communiques from race control, it very much felt that this was a storm in a teacup.

Even Verstappen didn't believe that there was any malice involved. He told Sky that "I think we were both trying to say to the safety car to speed up, because he was only going 120km an hour, but I think maybe the safety car was doing that to give a bit more time to maybe get a race lap in. So then I think George was trying to speed up to the safety car, I was trying to do the same, and then once he tried to speed up the safety car he then backed out and it just caused a bit of confusion."

Red Bull was able to make an allegation based on conjecture, pay the €2000, and not have to worry about not getting that money back since - for a Formula 1 team - it's a small fee

But Red Bull apparently did and, as it turned out, Red Bull indeed lodged a protest. The initial allegations it made were twofold, that a) Russell had engaged in unsportsmanlike conduct by trying to get Verstappen to pass him, effectively the equivalent of diving in the penalty box, and b), that Russell had fallen more than 10 car lengths behind the safety car.

In the event of a), it cited Russell's radio message as that attempt to goad Verstappen into passing him on the straight. Much was made of Verstappen's precarious penalty points situation, as he spent the Canadian Grand Prix weekend stuck on 11 of the 12 stamps needed to trigger a race ban, and the team appeared to suggest (without saying as much) that Russell wanted to get Verstappen beyond that threshold. Red Bull contended that Russell had looked in his mirrors to see where Verstappen was, and took the opportunity to attempt to get its driver in trouble.

Point b) was a lot less flimsy; Russell did appear to fall further behind the safety car when he'd pressed the brake pedal. Ex-Red Bull driver Sergio Perez was handed a five-second penalty at the end of the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix for an instance where he'd fallen beyond that requisite 10 lengths during a safety car period in that race, although it did not cost him the win that day. The team believed that the governing body should nonetheless uphold consistency in the bounds of its regulations.

Red Bull fell foul of the 10-car length rule behind the safety car with Perez at the 2022 Singapore GP

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

That standpoint is admirable, but it seemed like Red Bull had forgotten the circumstances of Perez's penalty. In fact, the Mexican was investigated for doing so twice during the course of that year's Singapore event; in the first instance, he received a reprimand for contending that he struggled to keep pace with the safety car on cold brakes and tyres. In the second, Perez was given a command by the race director to close in, and failed to meet that later on in the lap.

Either way, when it came to the actual release of the documents detailing the protest - which the stewards deemed as inadmissible - the car-length complaint had not appeared in the final filing. It's understood that Red Bull withdrew that aspect; instead, the protest simply hinged on the notion of unsportsmanlike conduct, which could not be proven. Russell's radio stated that he was attempting to respect the safety car and the delta time on his dashboard, and stated in the stewards' room that although his 'smoking gun' look into the mirrors was to check where Verstappen was, this was done to ensure he didn't brake directly in front of his RB21 and risk a collision.

In essence, Red Bull was able to make an allegation based on conjecture, pay the €2000, and not have to worry about not getting that money back since - for a Formula 1 team - it's a small fee. What it did do was essentially waste everyone's time, as the stewards' room summons apparently took 45 minutes and delayed the other decisions from coming in.

Because the protest complied with Article 13 in the FIA's International Sporting Code, which generally sets quite a low bar for protests as long as it can be tied to a purported regulatory breach, Red Bull was free to do this.

But this sort of thing? Down with it. Formula 1 has become far too suffused in its own bureaucracy in recent years, with overly complex caveats for every rule and even guidelines to tell drivers how to conduct themselves in wheel-to-wheel battles. And so the risk, by protesting an admittedly minor on-track moment, could theoretically open the floodgates to teams protesting other teams for every single minuscule action that could be perceived as a breach of the rules, devoid of nuance or context.

Red Bull's defence would be that, were Russell penalised, then it could have taken a win at the end of it. But goalhanging for penalties is never something that anyone wants to see, lest the racing become even more sanitised than it already is. And would a team really bask in the glory of a win, earned by nothing more than conjecture over something as subjective as sportsmanship? It would surely be much more damaging for its image in the long run; competitors are sometimes revered for their willingness to spot loopholes in regulatory work, but rarely is that done so cynically, and continued protests in that manner simply makes a team look gratuitously litigious.

Red Bull's route to protest hasn't gone down well in the F1 paddock

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

Had Brown's suggestion of, say, €25-50,000 admissions fee for a protest become part of the regulations, it would be very doubtful that Red Bull would formally submit its grievances. It's a big fee that would come with risk attached to it, especially if it was part of the cost cap. But if you had genuine concerns and evidence that something had been done to artificially affect the results of a race, you'd pay it.

A legitimately fair system for protests should be implemented here; this is not about discouraging teams from lodging formal claims that are provable and rooted in reality - this is about retaining the sanctity and the reputation of Formula 1 as a championship. That goes for rooting out any covert technical manifestations, deliberately dangerous driving, and wasting everyone's time with expensive complaints about nothing.

It would at least stop what are essentially glorified attempts to tell the teacher on Little Billy Biggins, whose mum was alleged to have boiled his egg for the egg-and-spoon race at the school sports day. Actually, that's arguably more of a sporting scandal than whatever this was in Montreal. This was just childish.

How will both Mercedes and Red Bull react next time out in Austria?

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