Horner: Liberty guilty of 'naive approach' to rule changes

Red Bull's Christian Horner believes Liberty Media pushed through this year's rule changes by following a "quite naive approach".

In a bid to facilitate overtaking and promote closer racing, the sport's commercial rights holder, in tandem with the FIA, introduced a series of technical changes that include a new - bigger and simpler - front wing design.

The jury is still as to whether the aero tweaks will have the intended effect on racing, but Horner is firmly in the camp of those who believe the changes will ultimately amount to nothing more than wasted millions.

• New 2019 aero rules will follow trial and error approach

"From what we see, the characteristics of the car are slightly different in different areas of the track, but in terms of following each other closely, I don’t think it is going to make any difference whatsoever," said Horner, speaking on Tuesday at a Red Bull media event in London.

"But, what I think will happen in the early part of the year, is that some people will have got it right, and some people won’t."

Formula 1 sporting manager Ross Brawn views this year's changes as a first phase destined to validate the regulation overhaul expected in 2021.

But Brawn admitted that if results weren't conclusive, F1 would learn and carry on, with progress based on trial and error. To the detriment of the teams laments Horner.

"I think they would even accept that it was probably a mistake to rush through this front wing change for this year," added Horner

"They have cherry picked something in isolation off a future concept for 2021, and rushed it through onto the current car.

"Like with all these things, there is no silver bullet. It has to be everything working in harmony with everything else.

"Just taking a front wing and saying that will make racing better, it is quite a naive and ultimately expensive approach. And of course the burden of that expense is on the teams."

While Horner praised Liberty for its efforts to promote the sport, the Red Bull Racing boss remains concerned about the reforms that await teams for 2021, on both the technical and financial fronts.

"The more concerning thing is what is their blueprint for regulations and financially for what they want F1 to be from 2021 onwards."

"It's vitally important any restructure is done on a fair and equitable basis. Financial regulations and governance are an enormously hard thing to police fairly and we are waiting to see how they do that."

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