Zak Brown’s heavy-handed Red Bull jibes are not needed when McLaren is on top

At some point during the Miami Grand Prix weekend, someone dressed in a McLaren shirt spent actual time printing off the words “TIRE WATER”, laminating them and then sticking them to the side of a water bottle.

Zak Brown’s tirade against Red Bull saw its latest episode play out last weekend with the McLaren boss taunting a supposed claim of the Milton Keynes side that water is being used to cool down the tyres.

It is a claim that has produced no evidence but rather than let people decide for themselves, Brown found it necessary to hammer home the point with his pit-lane stunt, something he joked was “his job” when asked to explain the reasoning behind it.

Brown is not alone in deploying these tactics.

When Aston Martin unveiled a car that looked a lot like the RB18 in 2022, the Red Bull pit wall were not drinking from their usual blue and silver cans but instead the ‘green’ edition of the energy drink.

An exchange between Christian Horner and Toto Wolff after the DAS system was first deployed saw the Red Bull boss congratulate his Mercedes counterpart for the ingenuity before stating “of course we will protest it.”

Even before the modern era, Formula 1 has always been a petty sport, one in which rivals will bend over backwards to get any kind of edge, but Brown’s verbal warfare has so far felt heavy-handed and ineffective.

The feud can be dated back to 2022 and Red Bull’s cost cap breach.

As the FIA deliberated what punishment should be handed out for the $2.3 million overspend, Brown wrote a letter to the FIA and F1 presidents claiming it was “cheating” and said serious sporting penalties should be applied.

Ever since then, Brown has made it his mission to target Red Bull and in particular Horner at every occasion.

He has attacked them over their dual ownership of two F1 teams, over the way they talked to Max Verstappen after his clash with Lando Norris in Austria last year and in particular once the investigation into Horner was made public last year.

That was the green light for Brown to really go after Horner, implying the integrity of the sport was under threat, but a year later he admitted it was all part of a plan to try and destabilise a then-dominant Red Bull.

He also claimed Verstappen wins because he has the quickest car, a statement the Dutchman was keen to remind Brown of live on TV when he won his fourth title last year at the expense of McLaren.

But even as the tide of performance has swung to McLaren’s favour, Brown has continued with his attacks on Red Bull with the water bottle graffiti the latest amongst them.

The only problem is Brown has ignored the golden rule of s**t-talking: it needs to be well crafted as anything too heavyhanded is jarring.

By choosing Horner as his opponent, Brown is the student going up against the master and finding himself coming up short.

Horner is as experienced an operator as you can get.

He has been in the sport since 2005, at the same time Brown was working on​ his motorsport marketing business, and has been the dominant champion and also the “yapping little terrier” biting at Mercedes’ ankles.

But if there was one strength Horner has over all of his counterparts, it is his ability with the microphone.

There is an art to s**t-talking and subtlety remains key to it.

Horner has the lexical ability to lead the audience right to the very edge of his point but crucially, allow them to make the last step themselves.

Brown, meanwhile, would rather hit you across the face with the point just to ensure that you get it.

The result is Brown becoming an increasingly polarising figure in F1 fandom, far from the loveable character he was when he first entered the sport.

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It would be easy to deceive it as American brashness versus British restraint because Austrian Toto Wolff has already demonstrated how best to deal with Horner – ignore him.

When Mercedes were dominant, Wolff did not feel the need to sink to Horner’s level, something the Red Bull boss was desperate to do, so why does Brown, when McLaren are flying high, increasingly lower himself to this?

It feeds into a wider McLaren strategy of doing anything to avoid admitting you have the best car on the grid – a tactic that has seen them becoming increasingly frustrating for even their own fans.

With McLaren P1 and P2 in the championship, Brown needs to recognise that it is time for the cars to do the talking and childish stunts are for the hunters, not the hunted.

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