Red Bull suspects McLaren and a few other teams of filling water into the tyres

[AR3-GP]

Courtesy of Mercedes

[basti313]

What are they adding to the valve at 0:47?

[AR3-GP]

What I'm curious about in this saga is the lack of comment from Mclaren. Mclaren have offered a public defense to every other allegation levied against them this year (brake cooling holes around Silverstone, mini-DRS). Unless I missed something, they have not made any comment on this subject. One could choose to read into this in a lot of ways...


Also, as a general comment, Mclaren was still struggling with overheating tires at the beginning of the year and then suddenly, they weren't. I have never heard of a team fixing tire overheating issues within a season.

Mercedes hasn't fixed their rear tire heating issues (the car only works in cold weather)
Ferrari spent all of 2023 with tire overheating and required major changes to get things under control for 2024 (and arguably went too far in opposite direction)
Red Bull have struggled with tire overheating all year long.



The last time Max Verstappen made comment publicly about another team doing things they shouldn't was the fuel-gate in 2019...

[chrisc90]

Maybe Red Bull should ask Zak and his team to sign a affidavit stating they never manipulated the pressures inside the tyres with water.

[_cerber1]

What I'm curious about in this saga is the lack of comment from Mclaren. Mclaren have offered a public defense to every other allegation levied against them this year (brake cooling holes around Silverstone, mini-DRS). Unless I missed something, they have not made any comment on this subject. One could choose to read into this in a lot of ways...


Also, as a general comment, Mclaren was still struggling with overheating tires at the beginning of the year and then suddenly, they weren't. I have never heard of a team fixing tire overheating issues within a season.

It's all pretty easy to explain, they brought the B chassis to Miami, which solved a lot of the problems with the tires. During the season, there were also updates that allowed the tires to work better.

[PapayaFan481]

...

Also, as a general comment, Mclaren was still struggling with overheating tires at the beginning of the year and then suddenly, they weren't. I have never heard of a team fixing tire overheating issues within a season.

Mclaren struggled with tyre overheating only until they brought their Miami upgrade package. It is perfectly reasonable to expect such a massive overgrade package to fundamentally change a car's behaviour.

No reason for it to need to resort to conspiracies, but that's just the world we live in these days.

People had come up with perfectly logical, science based explanations for the way McLaren look after their tyres allowing them to be faster towards the end of stints. Then suddenly Red Bull throw the idea out that somehow they're adding water without ever being seen doing so OR Pirelli finding any evidence of it and BAM McLaren are only good on their tyres because they're cheating as far as some fans are concerned.