Toto Wolff has hit back at Christian Horner over his criticism of the three-engine limit that comes into force in 2018, feeling the Red Bull Racing Team Principal only has himself to blame for the move.
2018 will see a reduction from four to three power units, with the aim to reduce the cost customer teams incur when paying for their engines, but Wolff, the Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, says Horner cannot have it both ways.
Discussions took place to work out the best way forward, and teams were set to continue with the four power units next season only for costs to be brought into it, which meant a decision was made to lower the limit to three next season.
“If it’s barking mad, they shouldn’t have pushed to try to push for lower supply price, and we shouldn’t have agreed to give that in order to achieve lower supply price,” said Wolff to Motorsport.com.
“We’re going to go down from four engines, which was bound in the regulations, to three engines. This is where we are – the regulations stood for four engines for next year, and we were perfectly fine for that.
“All manufacturers were pushed, let’s call it strongly encouraged, to optimise on the supply price – and this is what we did and this was the consequence.
“And everybody, as far as I remember who was on the table, was part of it. It’s a massive struggle for all of us, but it’s out of what we have discussed.”
