Horner dismisses Hamilton's FIA call to curb Red Bull

Christian Horner feels Formula 1 already has a "handicap" system in place as he dismissed Lewis Hamilton's call for the FIA to make changes to car development.

The Mercedes driver believes F1's governing body should stop teams from being able to start development on the car for the following season until later in the year in a bid to stop dominant teams, such as Red Bull in 2023, from keeping their advantage in-baked.

Max Verstappen gave the idea short-shrift when presented with Hamilton's comments, with Red Bull boss Horner of the opinion that the ATR restrictions and cost cap are already good enough to reel back dominant squads.

Horner dismisses Hamilton's idea

"He's obviously talking from personal experience," Horner told media, including RacingNews365.com, of Hamilton's idea.

"I think it would be an incredibly hard thing to police. How on Earth could you say: 'Right first of August, go.'

"How do you prevent people thinking about or working on next year's cars?

"We have a handicap system in Formula 1 through the reduction of wind-tunnel time. Franz [Tost and the AlphaTauri] team have almost double the amount of time that we have.

"That is a significant handicap, and I think Aston Martin will start to feel that when it is reset at the midpoint of the year.

"For us, we have to pick and choose very, very sparingly what are we going to commit to putting through the wind tunnel so it will have an effect and that system didn't exist years ago.

"We will see that playing and I think the most important thing, and the history of Formula 1 demonstrates it, is stability.

"Not messing with the regulations will always create convergence and it's just a period of time. That convergence is already starting to happen.

"By the time we get to the end of 2025, all the teams will converged, and then we screw it all up and go again in 2026 [when new Power Unit regulations come into force]."