Red Bull warns McLaren's battling F1 drivers could prioritize "self-interest"

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has suggested that McLaren's current F1 championship situation, with two drivers vying for points, could lead to "self-interest outweighing team interest," potentially harming the Woking-based team.

Horner commented on the battle between McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri for second place at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola. Norris pitted under a late-race safety car, which resulted in him rejoining behind his teammate Piastri.

Mclaren allowed the drivers to race rather than instructing Piastri to yield, which allowed Max Verstappen to maintain his lead and extend his advantage. Norris eventually overtook Piastri after a close duel at Tamburello, with Piastri defending the inside line into Turn 2. Horner commended both drivers for avoiding a collision.

"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," Horner said regarding McLaren's race strategy. "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-, 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. At some point, self-interest will always outweigh team interest. That's the conflict. 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."

Horner believes Red Bull had superior pace at Imola, building on their performance throughout the weekend. He was particularly pleased with Verstappen's ability to balance competitive lap times with tyre management.

"I think today we had the pace to cover whatever they could throw at us," Horner added. "I think the first stint was really encouraging because we could see that [Verstappen] was managing more than the guys behind. So, he was driving very smartly and still pulling out a gap. And that's always a happy place to be in. So, you get the longevity. And it's the first time in quite a while that we've been in that position."