The year that diplomacy died
“They definitely have a true dislike for each other. It’s added to the drama. I think you do see them playing to the camera a bit from time to time.”
McLaren CEO Zak Brown’s summary may have befitted Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in 2021. But it was their respective team bosses, Christian Horner of Red Bull and Toto Wolff of Mercedes, who Brown was talking about after one of the most toxic political battles Formula 1 has seen in the past decade.
Horner said 2021 had been “by far the most intense political fight we’ve been involved in in our time in this sport” as Red Bull looked to dethrone Mercedes from its seven consecutive years as constructors’ champion. It led to a season of shots being fired back and forth, appeals against rulings, recreations of incidents, rights to reviews, on-track collisions, and controversy that went down to the very last lap of the season – and beyond.
The political landscape in F1 this year was vastly different to 2020, when battles had engulfed all teams at one point or another, particularly through the Concorde Agreement renewal. Bar some early-season gripes from Aston Martin over the downforce cuts to slow the
