Zak Brown is looking forward to an era of what he hopes will be healthier relations between McLaren and Red Bull. This is after the Austrian company sacked long-serving team boss Christian Horner.<\/p>\n
Brown has already met with Laurent Mekies<\/a>, Horner\u2019s replacement, in the hope of a fresh start. The two teams will always be competitors on track, but the McLaren CEO wants to end a pattern of off-track barbs. <\/p>\n The American says it\u2019s a \u2018shame\u2019 that Horner was sacked<\/a> given what he\u2019d achieved, even though it was clear the two didn\u2019t get on. Lando Norris and Max Verstappen became direct rivals last year, but the bigger bone of contention was the legality of the McLaren car.<\/p>\n CATEGORYMCLARENRED BULLWins1711Poles1612Podiums4523Points1,225783How McLaren compare to Red Bull since the start of last season<\/p>\n Aside from a rear-wing modification after a dialogue with the FIA, the Woking outfit have consistently been ruled in full compliance with the regulations. But that hasn\u2019t stopped Red Bull<\/a> from formulating theories about rule-bending or even rule-breaking, having been supplanted as F1\u2019s dominant team.<\/p>\n Red Bull suggested McLaren were cooling garages and changing constructions<\/p>\n Horner<\/a> went to remarkable lengths as he scrutinised the papaya car. Red Bull even pointed thermal imaging cameras at the McLaren<\/a> during a pit stop to assess their tyre temperatures.<\/p>\n The FIA then received a \u2018wild\u2019 letter<\/a> with a list of hypotheses about their cooling techniques. Red Bull were trying to establish whether the concepts in question were legal.<\/p>\n A video from The Race has now revealed some of the ideas that hadn\u2019t previously come to light. There was even talk that McLaren<\/a> had made a \u2018sneaky\u2019 change to their tyre construction.<\/p>\n Red Bull retracted that suggestion at the end of last season, but Brown felt aggrieved. In his eyes, it went beyond the realms of fair competition.<\/p>\n \u201cMcLaren began exposing Red Bull\u2019s struggle to improve their car\u2019s inherent balance issues,\u201d Scott Mitchell-Malm recounted. \u201cHorner\u2019s team started to point fingers at what other factors could be behind that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt started putting pressure on the FIA<\/a> to intervene over excessive front and rear-wing flexing, then it moved on to theories about McLaren finding ways to cool its tyres by adding water inside the wheel, or even benefiting from a sneaky tyre construction change.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no evidence of this being true, and this was quietly recanted by Red Bull after the season ended.<\/p>\n Mitchell-Malm added: \u201cZak Brown<\/a> thinks Red Bull crossed a line here, with a host of questions about design ideas and procedures related to tyre cooling that pertained to the use of gases within the tyre, the heating or cooling of a garage to potentially influence the temperatures of the car, and multiple ideas for very specific, almost entirely illegal, tyre cooling trickery.\u201d<\/p>\n Red Bull bosses didn\u2019t like Christian Horner\u2019s relationship with Zak Brown<\/p>\n Horner lent into his image as the \u2018pantomime villain\u2019 by launching public jibes at Brown. It wasn\u2019t one-sided, with the 53-year-old responding in kind.<\/p>\n