Newey takes Mercedes' remarks as a compliment: "Top teams only look at rivals"

The title battle between Red Bull Racing and Mercedes is being fought not only on the track, but also off it. Toto Wolff tried to take advantages of their rivals when they started to pull away from Mercedes, and there was a media war with Christian Horner and Helmut Marko after Max Verstappen's crash at Silverstone.

Adrian Newey, Chief Technical Officer and designer at Red Bull Racing, only takes Mercedes' lobbying behaviour as a compliment. "Top teams are only interested in what their rivals are doing, not teams further back," he says on the Talking Bull podcast. "In a way you can take that as a compliment."

Newey says politics behind the scenes is new

"We've been in this situation before, but I don't remember it being so political behind the scenes then," Newey continues. "Except maybe at the time when aeroelastics were under the microscope in 2010 and 2011, then we had to adapt to rule changes every time."

The top designer says that somewhere the situation is similar to a war situation. "I don't really like that comparison, but it's pretty accurate. You have to look at every possible aspect to improve your position. That's also the nature of Formula 1," Newey said.