Red Bull boss Christian Horner has claimed Mercedes told Lewis Hamilton to “bitch” about his back pain so that they can pressure F1 chiefs into changing the rules for their benefit.
It came after the Azerbaijan on Grand Prix on Sunday where the 2.2km main straight in Baku would have been bad for their car as it suffers extremely badly from the porpoising effect.
This is when the car is so low to the ground, it starts bouncing up and down off the ground when going at high speeds along straights and was made even worse by the bumpy nature of the street circuit.
Both Hamilton and his team-mate George Russell took a hammering over the 51-lap race but it was Hamilton who seemed to suffer most as he came over the radio saying "my back is killing me".
At the end of the race when the cars were parked in parc ferme, Hamilton could be seen struggling out of his car, with one arm holding his back.
Horner believes Hamilton has been told to do this rather than him actually being in such pain.
When he was asked what he would do if it were his team suffering so much, Horner said: "Tell them to bitch as much as they could over the radio and make as big an issue out of it as they possibly could."
Asked if he felt this is what Mercedes were doing, he added: "Of course it is. Look, it is uncomfortable but there are remedies to that but it is detrimental to the car performance. What is the easiest thing to do? Complain from a safety point of view but each team has a choice."
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff begs to differ with him revealing that Hamilton's pain was so severe that he may not be able to take part in the next race in Canada.
Horner was asked what he would do if his team was suffering from extreme porpoising and he said "Tell them to bitch as much as they could over the radio and make as big an issue out of it as they possibly could".
Horner also said Mercedes were complaining about it from a safety point of view as it is "the easiest thing to do".
He then went on to say "If it was a genuine safety concern across the whole grid then it is something that should be looked at but if it is only affecting isolated people and teams, then that is something that the team should potentially deal with”.
Horner believes that if Mercedes dressing it up as a safety concern forces a rule change, it would be "unfair" on the teams that have successfully found a solution to the porpoising and have spent time and money doing this which is even more important in this era of Formula 1 where there is limited wind tunnel running time and a cost cap in place.
Horner believes that the "technical guys" guys should do more and he stated: "You have a choice where you run your car and you should never run a car that is unsafe. But I think that is more for the technical guys because there are certain cars that have some issues and certain cars with very few issues. It would seem unfair to penalise the ones who have done a decent job versus the ones who have perhaps missed the target slightly".
