Christian Horner, Toto Wolff continue Red Bull-Mercedes feud as F1 at Qatar begins

Associated PressNov 19, 2021, 10:53 AM EST
F1 Horner Wolff feud
Dan Istitene/Getty Images
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LOSAIL, Qatar — The most dramatic Formula One title feud in at least a decade further intensified Friday when Christian Horner and Toto Wolff traded barbs at the same time the FIA denied Mercedes’ right to appeal last week’s non-penalty on F1 championship leader Max Verstappen.

Wolff, the head of Mercedes, and Red Bull principal Horner sat side-by-side during a tense 30-minute media briefing that displayed the full animosity between the two teams.

“It’s the world championship of the highest category in motor racing,” Wolff said, “and what started as Olympic boxing went to pro boxing and is now MMA. Elbows are allowed now because the rules say so, and the gloves are off. Nothing else is to be expected.”

F1 moved this week to Losail for the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix with the results of last week’s race still hanging over the championship fight. Lewis Hamilton earned his 101st victory at the Brazilian GP to cut his deficit to Verstappen to only 14 points with three races remaining.

Mercedes protested the decision not to penalize Verstappen in Sao Paulo when the Red Bull driver ran Hamilton wide off course as the seven-time champion attempted a pass for the lead. The FIA heard the appeal Thursday and then denied the Mercedes request as Horner and Wolff were in the middle of Friday’s briefing.

Horner shrugged off Wolff, declaring “there is no relationship” between the two. He also suggested the Mercedes team might be cracking as Red Bull attempts to end its reign at the top of the series.

“I think it’s the first time they’ve been challenged. It’s interesting to see how people react under pressure, how they react when they are challenged,” Horner said. “It’s by far the most intense political title fight we’ve been involved in in this sport.”

No relationship is one thing. But respect?

Horner said he appreciates what Mercedes has accomplished. Same for Hamilton, who can pass Michael Schumacher with a record eight championships if he can catch Verstappen over the next three races.

“But I don’t need to go to dinner with Toto. I don’t need to kiss his (butt) or anything like that. There’s a few other team principals that might,” Horner said. “Toto and I are very different characters and we operate in very different ways. Am I going to be spending Christmas with Toto? Probably not.”

Is there any chance at all for peace between the warring teams? Wolff thinks not.

“I think the competition is just too high,” Wolff said. “You cannot expect that you’re going to dinner with your rival or with a rival team or your enemy in sporting competition, irrespective of personalities and the characters.”

On the track, meanwhile, Verstappen topped the first practice session and seemed quite comfortable on the  5.4-kilometer (3.5-mile) circuit. Mercedes driver Valterri Bottas was fastest in second practice.

Hamilton was fourth in both sessions.

Verstappen has won a career-high nine races this season to put Hamilton on the ropes for the first time since 2016, when then-teammate Nico Rosberg edged him by five points to win the title. Hamilton has won four consecutive championships since losing to Rosberg.

Mercedes and Red Bull have been sparring all season – a collision between the drivers on the first lap of the British Grand Prix sent Verstappen to the hospital, and a crash between the two at Monza led to Verstappen’s car landing on top of Hamilton’s head.

But it reached another level in Brazil. Mercedes was found to have an illegal wing on Hamilton’s car, and Verstappen was caught on video taken from the grandstands illegally touching the part after practice.

The drama built all weekend and when Verstappen wasn’t penalized for running Hamilton wide, Mercedes erupted. Even though Hamilton won the race, Mercedes protested the no-call in hopes that Verstappen would be retroactively penalized. If the protest had been successful, Verstappen would have been given a time penalty that would have dropped him from second to third at the Brazilian GP and further tightened the title race.

Wolff said the ruling was “completely expected.”

“We wanted to trigger discussion around it because it probably will be a theme,” Wolff said. “We didn’t think it would go any further.”

Horner called it the right decision.

“Otherwise, it would have opened a Pandora’s box regarding a whole bunch of other incidents that happened in that race,” Horner said. “I think the most important thing now is to focus on this Grand Prix. We want a good, clean, fair fight.”

Strong rebounds for Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi amid some disappointments in the Indy 500

By May 28, 2023, 10:00 PM EDT
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INDIANAPOLIS – Alex Palou had not turned a wheel wrong the entire Month of May at the Indy 500 until Rinus VeeKay turned a wheel into the Chip Ganassi Racing pole-sitter leaving pit road on Lap 94.

“There is nothing I could have done there,” Palou told NBC Sports. “It’s OK, when it is my fault or the team’s fault because everybody makes mistakes. But when there is nothing, you could have done differently there, it feels bad and feels bad for the team.”

Marcus Ericsson was a master at utilizing the “Tail of the Dragon” move that breaks the draft of the car behind him in the closing laps to win last year’s Indianapolis 500. On Sunday, however, the last of three red flags in the final 16 laps of the race had the popular driver from Sweden breathing fire after Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden beat him at his own game on the final lap to win the Indianapolis 500.

Despite the two disappointments, team owner Chip Ganassi was seen on pit road fist-bumping a member on his four-car team in this year’s Indianapolis 500 after his drivers finished second, fourth, sixth and seventh in the tightly contested race.

Those are pretty good results, but at the Indianapolis 500, there is just one winner and 32 losers.

“There is only one winner, but it was a hell of a show,” three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Chip Ganassi Racing consultant Dario Franchitti told NBC Sports. “Alex was very fast, and he got absolutely caught out in somebody else’s wreck. There was nothing he could have done, but he and the 10 car, great recovery.

“Great recovery by all four cars because at half distance, we were not looking very good.”

After 92 laps, the first caution flew for Sting Ray Robb of Dale Coyne Racing hitting the Turn 1 wall.

During pit stops on Lap 94, Palou had left his stall when the second-place car driven by VeeKay ran into him, putting Palou’s Honda into the wall. The car sustained a damaged front wing, but the Chip Ganassi crew was able to get him back in the race on the lead lap but in 28th position.

Palou ultimately would fight his way to a fourth-place finish in a race the popular Spaniard could have won. His displeasure with VeeKay, whom he sarcastically called “a legend” on his team radio after the incident, was evident.

“The benefit of being on pole is you can drive straight and avoid crashes, and he was able to crash us on the side on pit lane, which is pretty tough to do, but he managed it,” Palou told NBC Sports. “Hopefully next year we are not beside him. Hopefully, next year we have a little better luck.”

Palou started on the pole and led 36 laps, just three fewer than race leader Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren Racing.

“We started really well, was managing the fuel as we wanted, our car was pretty good,” Palou said. “Our car wasn’t great, we dropped to P4 or P5, but we still had some good stuff.

“On the pit stop, the 21 (VeeKay) managed to clip us. Nothing we could have done there. It was not my team’s fault or my fault.

“We had to drop to the end. I’m happy we made it back to P4. We needed 50 more laps to make it happen, but it could have been a lot worse after that contact.

“I learned a lot, running up front at the beginning and in mid-pack and then the back. I learned a lot.

“It feels amazing when you win it and not so good when things go wrong. We were a bit lucky with so many restarts at the end to make it back to P4 so I’m happy with that.”

Palou said the front wing had to be changed and the toe-in was a bit off, but he still had a fast car.

In fact, his Honda was the best car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all month. His pole-winning four lap average speed of 234.217 miles per hour around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a record for this fabled race.

Palou looked good throughout the race, before he had to scratch and claw and race his way back to the top-five after he restarted 28th.

In the Indianapolis 500, however, the best car doesn’t always win.

“It’s two years in a row that we were leading the race at the beginning and had to drop to last,” Palou said. “Maybe next year, we will start in the middle of the field and go on to win the race.

“I know he didn’t do it on purpose. It’s better to let that pass someday.”

Palou said the wild racing at the end was because the downforce package used in Sunday’s race means the drivers have to be aggressive. The front two cars can battle for the victory, but cars back in fourth or fifth place can’t help determine the outcome of the race.

That is when the “Tail of the Dragon” comes into the play.

Franchitti helped celebrate Ericsson’s win in 2022 with his “Tail of the Dragon” zigzag move – something he never had to do in any of his three Indianapolis 500 victories because they all finished under caution.

In 2023, however, IndyCar Race Control wants to make every attempt to finish the race under green, without going past the scheduled distance like NASCAR’s overtime rule.

Instead of extra laps, they stop the race with a red flag, to create a potential green-flag finish condition.

“You do what you have to do to win within the rules, and it’s within the rules, so you do it,” Franchitti said. “The race is 200 laps and there is a balance.

“Marcus did a great job on that restart and so did Josef. It was just the timing of who was where and that was it.

“If you knew it was going to go red, you would have hung back on the lap before.

“Brilliant job by the whole Ganassi organization because it wasn’t looking very good at half-distance.

“Full marks to Josef Newgarden and Team Penske.”

Franchitti is highly impressed by how well Ericsson works with CGR engineer Brad Goldberg and how close this combination came to winning the Indianapolis 500 two-years-in-a-row.

It would have been the first back-to-back Indy 500 winner since Helio Castroneves in 2001 and 2002.

“Oh, he’s a badass,” Franchitti said Ericsson. “He proved it last year. He is so calm all day. What more do you need? As a driver, he’s fast and so calm.”

Ericsson is typically in good spirits and jovial.

He was stern and direct on pit road after the race.

“I did everything right, I did an awesome restart, caught Josef off-guard and pulled away,” Ericsson said on pit lane. “It’s hard to pull away a full lap and he got me back.

“I’m mostly disappointed with the way he ended. I don’t think it was fair and safe to do that restart straight out of the pits on cold tires for everyone.

“To me, it was not a good way to end that race.

“Congrats to Josef. He didn’t do anything wrong. He is a worthy champion, but it shouldn’t have ended like that.”

Palou also didn’t understand the last restart, which was a one-start showdown.

“I know that we want to finish under green,” Palou said. “Maybe the last restart I did, I didn’t understand. It didn’t benefit the CGR team.

“I’m not very supportive of the last one, but anyway.”

Dixon called the red flags “a bit sketchy.”

“The Red Flags have become a theme to the end of the race, but sometimes they can catch you out,” Dixon said. “I know Marcus is frustrated with it.

“All we ask for is consistency. I think they will do better next time.

“It’s a tough race. People will do anything they can to win it and with how these reds fall, you have to be in the right place at the right time. The problem is when they throw a Red or don’t throw a Red dictates how the race will end.

“It’s a bloody hard race to win. Congrats to Josef Newgarden and to Team Penske.”

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500