British former racing driver and current Team Principal of the Red Bull Formula One team, Christian Horner, hit out at Scuderia Ferrari by pointing out that there will be “no secret deal” between the Austrian team and the FIA as Red Bull attempt to put an end to the scandal related to their breach of the budget cap rules last season.
The Red Bull boss dramatically indulged in self-victimisation during Saturday’s press conference at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA), having to face the media and provide explanations for the allegations that Red Bull did no respect the cost cap regulation in 2021.
Christian Horner feels that Red Bull’s team’s employees’ kids were being bullied due to the allegations, and highlighted his disappointment for the comments made by their opponents due to this controversy. The Austrian side’s Team Principal wanted to point out that their settlement with the FIA will be “completely transparent”.
The 48-year-old therefore hit out at Scuderia Ferrari, given the fact that the Maranello team made a deal with the FIA back in 2020, due to a breach of the technical regulations that was never proven and conveniently forgetting that Ferrari was forced to sacrifice the following two seasons given the limitations of the power unit.
In February two years ago, the governing body revealed that it had reached a “settlement” with the Italian side regarding their 2019 engine investigation:
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“I can’t tell you that, obviously it’s a confidential discussion between ourselves and the FIA. What I will say once hopefully this situation is concluded there will be complete transparency and I will talk you through the reasoning behind our submission and the position that we had as to why we’ve felt that each of the line items that have been challenged we believe there’s a contrary position. It should be transparent. The whole thing should be transparent. There will be no private, secret deal, it will all be absolutely above board. This is very different to a previous situation.” – he said.
McLaren boss Zak Brown also took part in the Austin press conference with Christian Horner, while Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto was not able to attend due to not felling well.
While Zak Brown recently sent a letter to the FIA demanding for a severe punishment to teams which breach the budget cap, the McLaren boss confirmed he still has full trust in the FIA’s ability to solve this matter:
“I think we have a lot of trust in the FIA. All we were doing was volunteering our opinion for them to take into consideration. I think it has been a transparent process so far in that certificates were going to be issued, then it was delayed but they communicated. It was going to be delayed, they’ve communicated who has received, who hasn’t, who has procedural. I don’t think it’s right that it shouldn’t be a public hearing and I have a lot of confidence it will be transparent at the end. I think we need to let the process play out and only then you can really take a view on what you think of the process, but I think so far, it’s going according to how they laid out what the process would be.” – he concluded on Saturday.
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