Formula 1 News: Wolff defends McLaren amid cheating suspicions

(GMM) Toto Wolff has defended McLaren amid accusations the championship leading team may be using a suspicious technical trick in 2025.

Mercedes’ Wolff and his fellow bosses agreed that McLaren was on a “different planet” in Miami – where Red Bull escalated a suspicion that the team could be illegally injecting water into the tires for a cooling effect.

“They demonstrate their superiority on every tire type,” Wolff told Auto Motor und Sport.

Red Bull’s Christian Horner agreed: “Their advantage is always greatest where the tires are most stressed.”

Trolling Red Bull by sipping from a water bottle labelled “Tire Water” on the Miami pit wall, McLaren CEO Zak Brown essentially double-dared Horner to lodge a protest.

“This (accusation) is clearly going too far,” Brown said. “There is a team that is constantly trying to destabilize us with accusations along these lines.”

But even Wolff, who is closely politically aligned with McLaren, admits he has no idea how the team is pulling off its tire mastery.

“We don’t know,” he said. “But we’re working hard on it. We’re not just sitting back and watching, but trying to find the key through experimentation and development work.

“We need to find out as quickly as possible what McLaren is doing,” Wolff added, “because whatever it is, it could still be a winner next year as well.”

Red Bull has been using thermal imaging cameras that show extreme discrepancies between McLaren’s tire cooling compared to every other rival.

Wolff, though, says any suggestion McLaren is flirting at the edge of cheating is not fair.

“They’re not doing anything illegal,” he insisted. “Whatever they’ve discovered, we have no doubt that they’re operating within the rules.”