Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner has labelled Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff's rebuke to his concerns over F1's 2026 power unit regulations as "typical Toto". Horner and Wolff share a fiery history, with the pair involved in a number of run-ins across the tumultuous 2021 title battle, in which drivers Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were embroiled in their own fight. That tension continued into last year when the two Team Principals were involved in a war of words during the Canadian Grand Prix meeting, captured on Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive . The latest flare-up has come after Horner urged the sport to rethink its 2026 power unit regulations over fears F1 could morph into a "Frankenstein" formula. Wolff's response took a swipe at Red Bull's newly-created powertrains division, which in partnership with Ford is preparing for the soon-to-be-introduced regulations. "I think what frightens him more maybe is that his engine programme is not coming along and that maybe he wants to kill it that way," he told media, including RacingNews365 .
Aware of the challenges
Offering a reply, Horner said: "Unfortunately that's typically Toto where he's just focused on self-performance. "My interest is actually about the sport rather than self-gain. "It's still way too early to say who's going to have a competitive or uncompetitive engine in 2026… for me the most important thing is from a sports point of view, that we all have a collective responsibility to work with the FIA and the commercial rights holder to ensure that the product is as good as it can be, otherwise we've all failed." Asked whether there was a danger in changing the rule set after attracting new manufacturers, Horner replied: "The regulations are a hybrid of what was originally intended, and of course, it's only as you work through a set of regulations that you find out where their limitations are. "The FIA is being very responsible in terms of doing its due diligence, and I think certain teams share very similar opinions to that of our own. "They have a capable team, I think they're aware of what the challenges are."
Most read
