RED BULL boss Christian Horner says he would tell his drivers to “bitch as much as they could” if they had an issue similar to the one which hurt Lewis Hamilton’s back during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Horner told media after the race that publicly highlighting things like porpoising health issues in Formula One is just “part of the game”.
Porpoising refers to when an F1 car bounces up and down during races and is thought to be the thing which left Mercedes star Hamilton in agony after Sunday’s race in Baku.
Hamilton’s Merc team-mate George Russell has suggested the FIA need to look over the ground-effect aerodynamic regulations which have played a big role in causing their team’s W13 car to bounce.
Merc boss Toto Wolff says Hamilton’s injuries are severe enough to make him a doubt to race in Canada this weekend.
But Horner says the highlighting of these types of issues are typical of the gamesmanship which comes with F1.
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When asked how he would approach a porpoising issue for his drivers at Red Bull, he said: “I’d tell them to bitch as much as they could over the radio and make as big of an issue out of it as they possibly could.
“It’s part of the game.”
When asked whether he believed teams that were encouraging the complaints, he added: “Of course it is.”
Red Bull have mastered their engineering strategy and pulled away in the fight for the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.
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And Horner believes Merc could address their porpoising issue by simply raising the ride height of the car – instead of prioritising its performance.
He added: “There are remedies to that but it is to the detriment of the car performance, so the easiest thing to do is to complain from a safety point of view.
“I think if it was a genuine safety concern across the whole grid then it’s something that should be looked at.
“But if it’s only affecting isolated teams, then that’s something that team should potentially deal with.”
