"There are psychological games sometimes" - Red Bull and Mercedes 'not enemies' but 'competitors,' claims Helmut Marko

Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko revealed that the kind of rivalry portrayed between the Milton Keynes-based team and Mercedes in the media is far from the reality. Amidst Red Bull's resistance towards Mercedes' proposals for a technical directive to reduce the issues of porpoising, Marko admitted that the two teams are not enemies.

When asked if the FIA’s plan to introduce new technical directives is being proposed in a way that will predominantly benefit Mercedes, the Austrian said:

“Exactly. But that is out of the question. The teams that voted for it are McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes. Strangely enough, they are all teams with Mercedes engines. Is that a coincidence? The decisions are still a long way off. We have to come up with valid arguments. Just emphasising safety is not enough. Ferrari won’t accept that either. We are not enemies. It’s just that the subject is being blown up in the press. We are competitors, and it’s normal that there are psychological games sometimes.”

It will be interesting to see how this saga unfolds over the next few weeks.

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Red Bull boss once again speaks against proposed rule changes

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has previously been vocal about his opinions towards Mercedes' proposals to bring about rule changes to tackle porpoising and has once again emphasized that this would not be the "right thing to do."

Horner told Eurosport:

“Changing rules because a couple of teams haven’t managed to hit targets is never the right thing to do. If you want to have convergence in F1, the best thing to do is to leave it alone. Then all the teams will converge. What you would see next year, if the rules were left completely alone, I’d be surprised if you saw any bouncing because we’ve got some of the brightest engineers in the technical world solving these problems.”

He continued:

“These regulations are the biggest change we’ve had in 40 years. You can already see in recent races there’s not been any sign of some of the bouncing from earlier in the year. Some [teams] have said that it [a flexi-floor] doesn’t exist. As a matter of fact, some teams have skids that actually disappear when the car hits the bottom. The reason for skids is that they are the limitation of how much plank wear you can have, and if a skid can disappear miraculously into the floor, that is clearly against the regulations.”

Ferrari, too, has indicated that it might choose to protest against the FIA if it attempts to introduce a technical directive to take porpoising measures under a 'safety argument' in the next F1 season. Given the progress made by Mercedes over the course of the season, the Scuderia is convinced that porpoising no longer poses a safety threat to drivers. Red Bull and Mercedes are separated by 126 points in the Constructor Standings, while the latter continues to close in on Ferrari in second place.