I was more than a bit amused to read in this month’s F1 Racing, a confirmation from Red Bull team principal Christian Horner that he had executed a cunning plan in deflecting the services of Lewis Hamilton, which manifested into the strategic blunder of the decade.
“He wanted to drive for Red Bull in 2013. It wasn’t the only time he approached us” Horner told F1 Racing. “The McLaren had been very competitive in 2011 and 2012 and I thought it would probably be better for us for him to be at Mercedes than McLaren, so in the event of us not being able to sign him I encouraged Niki Lauda to sign him to weaken McLaren.”
Horner’s reason is textbook Ronald Reagan logic. Allow Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States Huey helicopters and bombs to Iraq in an effort to weaken Iran.
What could possibly go wrong?
To be fair, how could Horner foresee the juggernaut that Mercedes would become despite Ross Brawn playing a surreptitious role in guiding the 2014 engine regulations in Mercedes’ favour? It wasn’t like it had happened before. Double-diffusers are a bit like rainbows really; occasionally they just happen to collide with someone else’s keister.
Like an engineer transfixed by a computer screen jammed with weather data, sometimes it just pays to look up at the transparent fluid pelting your noggin. The signs that Hamilton might just have a decent pony in 2014 were visible in late 2013 when Mark Ellis defected from Red Bull to become Mercedes performance director just as Giles Wood (also formerly at Red Bull) was appointed chief engineer in charge of simulation and development.
History has also shown that McLaren also tend to slip into the odd performance sabbatical during a twenty-four month cycle, or as Mark Webber puts it: “they make the odd sh**box”. Surely Paddy Lowe’s departure from McLaren as Technical Director to join Mercedes would have been slightly more conspicuous than a sign instructing you ‘not to breathe under water’.
Fast forward to March 2015 and Red Bull headed into the competition season with just three wins and a Renault power-plant that had somehow managed to de-evolve and occasionally self-destruct – it’s only saving grace being Honda’s own version of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen act.
Horner’s admission then goes some way to explaining Red Bull’s insistence on acquiring Mercedes engines in 2016 rather than politely requesting them. But just because Horner inadvertently did Lauda a solid by letting Lewis slip through his fingers isn’t exactly the Daimler board’s problem. Furthermore, comparing Mercedes Formula One chief Toto Wolff to a Chinese urinal (which shares his surname) when the deal dematerialised wasn’t going to get him any candy at Merc’s front doorstep.
“I have to be clear”, Lauda told Sky Sports Formula One. “Christian (Horner and Helmut (Marko) wrote us (Mercedes) one letter to say they would like engines. I said ‘yes, but first we have to discuss with Mr Mateschitz’ because Mateschitz, for whatever reason, never liked Mercedes. Then the other thing we discussed, if we would give an engine, we want to grow together. We give an engine because we want the Red Bull young kids driving A-classes.
Despite unfavourable marketing campaigns for the A-Class (remember “Fabuttastic”?), Lauda’s anecdote does raise an obvious question. Why would Mercedes need Red Bull as a youth brand when they already paid £100 million for one in Lewis? It’s probably one of the same questions Mercedes were asking themselves.
Adding insult to Red Bull’s injury, Lewis himself made it clear to the press a week before Monza last year that he didn’t believe supplying Red Bull with Merc units was the most shrewd business decision. While he may have just been toeing the company line, I doubt even the heady life of partying with Rihanna would’ve blunted the recollection of Horner’s brush-off when the boot was on the other foot.
Intriguingly, the 2016 Horner appears to have taken a more relaxed approach to putting the squeeze on the Woking outfit.
“McLaren are a great team, but they shouldn’t be as far back as they are” he added in F1 Racing.
One wonders if Christian had his Mobile Strike app enabled when he made that comment.
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