Red Bull boss Christian Horner has suggested that potential “self-interest” from both McLaren drivers could see his team benefit as the 2025 Formula 1 season progresses.
The Milton Keynes-based squad saw an upturn in fortunes at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen taking only his second win of the campaign in dominant fashion.
It was a role reversal, with the dominant MCL39 left trailing in the wake of the previously-troublesome RB21, with Verstappen cruising to the flag.
The race saw a potential resurgence in the debate on how McLaren will conduct its inter-team affairs from the pit wall, with Lando Norris, then in third place, questioning if team-mate Oscar Piastri could move aside.
Norris was on fresher tyres and with the Safety Car having just come in, the Brit felt that perhaps being given a free run on Verstappen may enable him to snatch the win.
However, Norris eventually passed the Australian through his own steam rather than team intervention, but the pair had to settle for second and third, respectively.
Speaking after the race, Horner spoke of how Verstappen was able to utilise low degradation and the benefit of the Virtual and full Safety Cars to beat the McLarens.
“Oscar had obviously pushed quite hard early on and you could see he was starting to get a little bit of graining on that front-right,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“And so, it was borderline whether it was going to be a two-stop or one-stop.
“They obviously pulled the trigger on the two-stop, but it dropped you out because of the length of the pitlane here being 27 seconds.
“It put him into a world of pain traffic-wise. And so Max was then able to keep running and the deg was super low.
“And even with Lando in clean air behind, we were able to manage quite easily a nine-and-a-half-second gap.
“The VSC came out, and the pitstop was pretty straightforward. Oscar pitted again on his strategy, which sort of neutralised him, but by that time he’d used both of his hard tyres.
“And then that final Safety Car, obviously Max pitted, Lando pitted, but it dropped him behind Oscar, which was, you know, you’ve got two drivers that are fighting for a World Championship.”
Could ‘Papaya Rules’ benefit Red Bull?
Horner went on to praise both Norris and Piastri for the cleanness of their race craft, but disclosed his wonderment as to whether the two will continue to race in such a fraught way.
“At some point, self-interest will always outweigh team interest. That’s the conflict,” he highlighted.
“So, they did a good job to not make contact. It was commendable that they were allowed to race, but you could see it got pretty close.”
The subject of McLaren’s approach to both its cars racing cropped up at last year’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza.
Norris and Piastri were engaged in a duel for position, which prompted the team to issue an instruction known as ‘Papaya Rules’, which means both men can race each other, but without any risk of collision.
The crux of the questions around it at the time stemmed from the fact Norris was the only one of the two men realistically able to challenge for the title, which begged the question as to why Piastri was not instructed to hold back.
Now both men are locked in a battle for the title, it becomes a realistic reason for Red Bull to continue to throw its weight behind Verstappen to potentially pick up the pieces if they take points off of each other.
READ MORE – Lando Norris pinpoints area where McLaren ‘struggles’ compared to Red Bull
