Why Red Bull’s siege mentality isn’t helping its political causes

When will Red Bull tire of rabble-rousing - or even grasp that it advances the team’s cause not one jot?

Pleasing though it is to see another team finally making a fist of challenging Mercedes for on-track superiority in the hybrid era, in the off-track arena Merc still has all its rivals licked. It’s about time Red Bull engaged with this truism intelligently and strategically, rather than whipping the bellowing buffoons of social media into an abject froth in the hope that a pitchfork mob will do the trick.

It’s no secret that Red Bull has lost pretty much every off-track political engagement this year. On the aeroelasticity or otherwise of its rear wings, it lost. Perhaps more costly over the course of a season has been the FIA’s decision to alter the pitstop rules as of the Belgian GP; aside from the procedural clauses, the technical directive in effect outlawed several ‘active’ technologies Red Bull invested heavily in for its pit equipment.

Alex Albon, Red Bull Racing RB16 during a pitstop

Photo by: Andrew Hone / Motorsport Images

On each occasion Red Bull’s go-to strategy has been to engage 11 on the whinge dial. Time and again when things haven’t gone the team’s way, Christian Horner has decanted some incendiary soundbites into Sky Sports F1’s microphones, whence they are eagerly promulgated to the rest of the world – unchallenged, natch. Likewise, Dr Helmut Marko cannot resist the lure of the RTL camera crew. Within minutes the Internet is veritably alight as Red Bull’s fanbase bridles and chafes.

The siege mentality is understandable. Since pit equipment was theoretically homologated at the end of 2020, Red Bull has seen what ought to have been a baked-in advantage go up the swanee – along with a considerable amount of investment. The first-lap shunt at Silverstone was scary and damaging – both competitively and financially – and it’s easy to understand a view that Lewis Hamilton’s penalty was too lenient since he went on to win the race.

When the FIA deliberates it is guided by precedent and the wording of its regulations. It doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss about opinions, no matter how noisily expressed, on Twitter, Reddit, or web forums

Trouble is, while sport is an emotive subject, success is determined by practicalities. Mercedes, feeling it had been pegged back by rule changes over the winter, initially engaged in some low-level moaning before turning to more effective strategies – which included flexing its political muscles to chip away at Red Bull’s advantage. The rear wing? Moveable aerodynamic devices are outlawed, even if the boundaries of aeroelasticity are murky. Tugging the FIA’s sleeve for a technical directive was practically a slam dunk – as it must also have been with the pitstop equipment and procedures. The safety argument is very powerful, especially if ‘active’ devices enable an element of pre-emption.

Helmut Marko, Consultant, Red Bull Racing, and Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing, on the grid

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

When the FIA deliberates it is guided by precedent and the wording of its regulations. It doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss about opinions, no matter how noisily expressed, on Twitter, Reddit, or web forums. And Red Bull’s default approach remains to stoke fury in the media and the fanbase, as if it expects the FIA to cave if people clamour loudly enough. When Red Bull did go the legal route, with the peculiar ‘re-enactment’ of the Silverstone shunt, the case was dismissed because it offered no new evidence - as the team ought to have known, Ferrari having failed similarly in a previous case.

PLUS: How Red Bull endured its second car crash in two weeks

There’s a well-worn quote that the definition of insanity is to repeat an unsuccessful course of action in the hope of obtaining a different result. And yet recently Red Bull has reverted to ‘route one’, wheeling out Adrian Newey for a Q&A in which he – surprise, surprise – complains about the politics going on in F1 at the moment. And what a peculiar jeremiad it was; to read it you’d think that no team in the ascendancy had ever become a target for such things. Newey almost never speaks about current matters, and the timing was significant: the start of the summer break, when all those web outlets are hungry for soundbite-based ‘news’ to drive traffic.

That’s very generous of Red Bull – greasing the wheels of commerce – but will it help its cause? Will it persuade the FIA to un-ban Red Bull’s pit equipment, to be more lenient with the pullback test? Of course not.

Sparks kick up from the rear of Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images