Christian Horner has accused one of Red Bull's F1 rivals of using "underhand" tactics to contact his team's sponsors during last year's fierce cost cap dispute.
Red Bull became embroiled in a cost cap controversy that dominated talk in the paddock last year as Max Verstappen cruised to his second world title. The FIA ruled that Horner's team were found to have breached the new spending limits introduced in 2021.
And Red Bull were eventually slapped with a £6.07 million fine and a 10% reduction in permitted aerodynamic testing time for overspending by £1.86m as the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari condemned the breach.
Team principal Horner believes Red Bull are unjustly seen as the "bad guys" in F1 but understands that the world champions took a hit to their reputation during the cost cap saga.
However, Horner has revealed that he was left unimpressed when learning that one rival plotted to create a divide between his team and its commercial partners.
“It tainted us," he told inews. "These things get used by your rivals. We had one of them contacting our sponsors and partners making suggestions that we would be bringing their brands into disrepute. That was just underhand."
Red Bull are already being tipped to dominate once again after an ominous start to the 2023 season in the first two races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. No team has been able to live with the searing pace of the new RB19 masterpiece, with Max Verstappen the firm favourite to claim a third successive world crown.
But Horner believes his rivals will already be "scheming" in desperate attempts to stop another season of Red Bull supremacy.
He added: "There is always something, always a technical directive that drops, a game changer. You can guarantee that the others will be scheming, 'how can we slow them down?' It's part of the game. Having lived through it before you become more seasoned in how to ride it out."
