Red Bull's Christian Horner believes integrity in the form of a public apology to a driver following a strategic error is the wrong approach to team accountability.
After Valtteri Bottas' retirement from last weekend's Austrian Grand Prix and before Lewis Hamilton's own demise following a reliability issue, Mercedes made a wrong strategy call when it failed to pit the reigning world champion at the outset of a virtual safety car period.
The German team and chief strategist James Vowles publicly owned up to the mistake by apologizing to Hamilton twice over the radio, encouraging him to push on despite the crucial time lost by the blunder.
Horner insisted his Red Bull crew would not have taken its accountability public had the team been confronted with a similar situation.
"Every driver is different, and I've never worked with Lewis so I don't know what makes him tick, but it seems a fairly bizarre thing for someone to need to do -- to throw themselves under the bus to motivate a driver to go from fourth back into the lead," Horner said.
"I think that obviously Mercedes has got so used to being at the front, qualifying on the front row, and any race that they are not on the podium it is disastrous."
Horner's argument is that by exposing an individual to broad daylight, it puts that individual at risk of succumbing to pressure.
"It's quite difficult without knowing the intricacies of other teams, but the one thing you have to do as a team is win as a team and lose as a team, and that's why we don't often -- or hardly at all -- talk about individuals in success or failure, because that puts an unfair amount of scrutiny and pressure on that individual.
"So certainly our philosophy is that, as a team, it's collective responsibility rather than an individual's.
"Of course there has to be accountability, but that's something that's dealt with in the right environment behind closed doors, not in a public forum."
Brown wants de Ferran to maximise team and driver performance
From his role as a consultant with McLaren, Gil de Ferran has been entrusted with extracting the best performance from the team and its drivers on race weekends.
The Woking-based outfit's latest leadership changes have forced former racing director Eric Boullier out of the team, with two-time IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner de Ferran taking over part of the Frenchman's sporting responsibilities.
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