'Red Bull has doubts about alleged actions of McLaren'

15:23, 03 May

bySandy van Wijngaarden

Red Bull Racing has conducted its own investigation into the McLaren team's tyre cooling. According to the Austrian racing team, it has reportedly been shown that this cannot be achieved with air cooling alone.

The area where McLaren excels this season is tyre management. The Woking-based team seems to have little trouble with tyre wear on the different types of asphalt. This advantage can be seen during both qualifying and the Grand Prix. During qualifying for the Miami sprint race this became painfully clear again. Oscar Piastri qualified in P2 and Lando Norris in P3, ahead of Max Verstappen in P4.

'Red Bull draws hard conclusion after investigation into McLaren'

Now, according to Auto, Motor und Sport, Red Bull has recently been paying attention to McLaren's brake cooling. The Austrian racing team has used thermal camera images to look at the cooling channels of the British team's brakes. This indirectly affects the tire temperature.

The medium reports that Red Bull has concluded that especially in Bahrain and Jeddah, McLaren's brake drums remained remarkably cool. According to Auto, Motor und Sport, Red Bull would conclude from this that this is impossible.

According to the medium, Red Bull and Racing Bulls would have asked the FIA technical questions. As a result, the FIA would carry out extra checks, although this has not been confirmed by the motorsport federation.

A year ago, Red Bull already had doubts about how McLaren would handle the tires. It was suggested that McLaren would spray water into the tires to keep the tyres cool. The McLaren CEO came back to this in his own way in Miami. Zak Brown drank from a bottle with 'Tyre water' on it. McLaren has never been caught for any violation.