Brown claps back at McLaren cheating suspicions

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This past weekend in Miami, McLaren cheating suspicions grew to a chorus, as rival F1 team principles all agreed that McLaren was on a ‘different planet.’ The papaya cars of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished a comfortable one-two, several seconds up the road from third-placed George Russell.

Nevertheless, Mercedes’ Toto Wolff has defended McLaren cheating accusations, saying he has no idea how the team is pulling off its tyre mastery but it’s nothing illegal. “They clearly demonstrate their superiority on every tyre type,” Wolff said. While other rival F1 bosses believe the championship-leading team must be using a more-spurious technical trick in 2025.

MCLAREN CHEATING ACCUSATIONS

However, it was Red Bull who escalated the McLaren cheating suspicion, saying it believes the team is illegally injecting water into the tyres for cooling. Then, trolling Red Bull by sipping from a water bottle labelled ‘Tire Water’ on the Miami pit-wall, McLaren CEO Zak Brown essentially double-dared Horner and Red Bull to lodge an official protest.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner agreed: “Their advantage is always greatest where the tyres are most stressed. We’re working hard to understand it. And we’re not just sitting back and watching. We’ll find the key through experimentation and development work.”

THERMAL IMAGINING

Furthermore, the Red Bull team has even gone so far as using thermal imaging cameras to study the McLaren. The team says it shows extreme discrepancies between McLaren’s tyre cooling compared to every other car on the grid. Hence the assumption they might be doing something nefarious, like pumping water into the tyres to keep them cool.

Wolff, though, says any suggestion of McLaren cheating is unfair. “Whatever they’ve discovered, we have no doubt that they’re operating within the rules,” insisted Wolff – with GMM