Toto Wolff takes a dig at Red Bull's Christian Horner: "I don’t want to fall into the trap of my fellow team principal from next door"

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has taken a dig at his Red Bull compatriot Christian Horner as questions of single-team dominance continue to plague the sport. The switch-to-ground effect has meant a complete shift in the pecking order at the front of the grid.

Mercedes dominated the previous era and won all eight titles. In 2022, however, the German team had a major misstep as it experimented with a zero sidepod concept. Red Bull, on the other hand, stole the march on the grid and has since managed to put together one dominant season after the other.

In 2022, Red Bull won 17 races, while in 2023, the team took things a step further and won 21 of the 22 races. Even the 2024 F1 season is expected to be on the same lines, as the car is just too good, and as a driver, Max Verstappen is relentless. When questioned about the team's dominance and its impact on F1, Toto Wolff took a dig at Christian Horner.

The Austrian alluded to the era of Mercedes dominance that began in 2014 and 2015 and claimed that, unlike Christian Horner, he would not call for regulation changes. It's worth noting that the 2014 and 2015 seasons saw Red Bull stuck with an uncompetitive Renault power unit.

There were calls from the Austrian brand to change regulations amidst threats of pulling out of the sport altogether. Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, Wolff said:

“I don’t want to fall into the trap of my fellow team principal from next door in 2014 or 15 who said we should change the regs because it [Mercedes] is too dominant. I think they’ve done the best job of all the teams over the last two years, credit where credit is due."

Toto Wolff commends Christian Horner's Red Bull

Wolff was, however, complimentary of the job Red Bull had done. The team dominated the first two races of the season, similar to last year. There's not much the opposition can do at this stage, as it is not even close in terms of performance.

Commending the job done by Christian Horner's team, Toto Wolff said:

"I mean they are literally disappearing into the distance as they want, and there’s nobody else close. But there is not a huge performance differential with everybody that follows depending on the track, is just they are in a different league and that is our sport. It is an honest sport and the best performance is being rewarded from car, machine and man.”

Away from all the achievements on the track, Red Bull is going through political turmoil in the background. There appears to be an ongoing battle for control between Christian Horner and the Thai shareholders against the Austrian shareholders.