Red Bull responds to McLaren ‘hand grenade’ after Verstappen FIA query raised

Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan is “not surprised” that McLaren “rolled a hand grenade into the situation” that was Max Verstappen’s Brazil engine change.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella queried how Verstappen’s new engine would be represented in Red Bull’s F1 cost cap compliance, though Monaghan does not anticipate any repercussions coming Red Bull’s way. Indeed, the FIA has backed away from getting involved.

Red Bull comfortable with Max Verstappen engine change

Red Bull had opted to overhaul Verstappen’s RB21 setup and fit a new Honda engine after his Q1 elimination in Brazil. That meant that Verstappen was required to start from the pit lane.

The results were emphatic as Verstappen raced to a podium finish, though Stella raised a question mark, claiming that “these kinds of power unit changes challenge the regulations”.

Stella was referencing a distinction between engine changes for reliability versus performance reasons. This understanding influences how new engines are considered in relation to the cost cap, with reliability-driven changes not counting against a team’s expenditure.

“I’m not surprised someone just sort of rolled a hand grenade into the situation,” Monaghan, Red Bull’s chief engineer, is widely reported as having said.

“If the situation were round the other way we could do the same. What we did is defendable, it’s legitimate, and if you go back through even this generation of car – from, say, 2022 to this year – people have made engine changes, so there’s nothing unusual in it.

“Personally, it’s a grey area. As far as I’m concerned, we justified to ourselves what we were going to do. If we’re questioned on it we will justify it.”

Monaghan reiterated his belief that Red Bull could “defend” its actions and so, “there will not be a penalty against us at the end of the year for it.”

Monaghan added that “the advice” which Red Bull received from Honda on the engine that was previously in Verstappen’s car, was that “if we are absolutely backed into a corner, it may well do a few more kilometres.”

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Red Bull is indeed in the clear. Nikolas Tombazis, the single seater director of Formula 1’s governing body, the FIA, explained that the organisation lacks the “expertise” to get into such a debate with the teams.

He admitted that a “weakness” in the regulations was therefore exposed by this Verstappen engine debate.

“What we’ve not been keen to get involved in, as the FIA at the moment, is a situation where when there’s an engine change, we have to argue with the team or the PU manufacturer whether a bit of telemetry indicates potentially a reliability issue or not,” Tombazis told the media in Las Vegas.

“We don’t feel we have the expertise to argue with them whether it’s really a reliability or strategic change. And, again, in some cases it’s obviously in one or the other camp. But when you’re in that crossover area, it would be difficult.

“So this has been a weakness in the current regulations — the combination of Financial plus Technical and Sporting — and it’s been an area where we’ve adopted this approach where we accept these changes without getting into discussion about the impact on the cost cap.”

But, it is a weakness which should soon resolve itself, thanks to the engine-specific cost cap coming in F1 2026.

“However, it has been one of the areas where next year, with the cost cap for the PU manufacturers as well as the teams, this matter is resolved,” Tombazis continued, “because the PU manufacturers would never find it convenient to make a strategic change, because each time it’s going to cost them approximately the cost of an engine — a million, if it’s just the internal combustion or whatever.

“And that will provide a natural mechanism.

“So we think it’s a weakness in the current set of regulations, where there’s no PU cost cap, but we think it gets resolved completely next year. It will stop being a topic of discussion.”

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