{"id":71132,"date":"2025-05-03T12:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T12:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71132\/"},"modified":"2025-05-03T12:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-03T12:27:08","slug":"thermal-cameras-and-tyre-water-as-red-bull-unravel-mclaren-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/71132\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermal cameras and ‘tyre water’ as Red Bull ‘unravel’ McLaren mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Such is Red Bull\u2019s alleged belief that McLaren have tricks to cool their tyres, it is being claimed the Milton Keynes squad is using \u2018thermal imaging cameras to determine the temperature at the tyre cooling ducts during\u2019 pit stops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last season, as the RB20 fell behind the McLaren<\/a> MCL38 as the car to beat and Red Bull reportedly suspected McLaren were filling their tyres with water in order to better cool them.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tire water\u2019 in a McLaren drink\u2019s bottle and\u2026?<\/p>\n

According to initial reports, concerns were raised at the 2024 Singapore when moisture was spotted inside the wheel rims after the tyres were stripped from the cars after the race.<\/p>\n

However, Pirelli, Formula 1\u2019s sole tyre supplier, told Motorsport.com<\/strong> that they had not noticed any abnormal behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot see anything strange from the data we have,\u201d Mario Isola, Pirelli\u2019s head of F1 and car racing, said. \u201cI don\u2019t have any evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not aware of any issue<\/a>,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

More from the Miami Grand Prix weekend<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Revealed: The one corner that secured Kimi Antonelli pole in Sprint qualy<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Winners and losers from the 2025 Miami Grand Prix sprint qualifying<\/a>
That, though, did little to calm the waters.<\/p>\n

According to a new report on Auto Motor und Sport<\/a>, Red Bull\u2019s suspensions remain given McLaren\u2019s superior tyre wear that resulted in late-race charges in F1 2024 with the 2025 MCL39 also showing better tyre wear than rivals.<\/p>\n

McLaren have won four to this year\u2019s five Grands Prix, marching out to a 77-point lead in the Constructors\u2019 Championship<\/a> while they also hold down the 1-2 in the Drivers\u2019 standings where Oscar Piastri is 10 points ahead of Lando Norris. Max Verstappen, P3, a further two points off the pace.<\/p>\n

Red Bull reportedly want to know how McLaren are able to keep their Pirelli tyres in the \u2018magic window so reliably \u2013 no matter what the tarmac temperature, no matter what the track\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to AMuS, the team has turned to thermal imaging cameras to capture the temperature of the tyre cooling ducts on the MCL39 when the drivers come in for their pit stops with the focus primarily on the rear tyres as they generally overheat more quickly than the fronts.<\/p>\n

The German publication claims Red Bull have noted \u2018many blue areas around the brake vents on the McLaren tyres, while all the other cars showed a lot of orange and red\u2019 with the team coming to the conclusion that it is \u2018impossible\u2019 to cool the tyres that well with just air alone.<\/p>\n

But while neither Red Bull nor McLaren have commented on the latest tyre speculation, Zak Brown did level a cheeky dig during Friday\u2019s running at the Miami Grand Prix as he sat on the pit box with a bottle of water with \u2018tire water\u2019 written on it.<\/p>\n

Alerted to his rival\u2019s antics, Red bull team boss Christian Horner quipped to Sky F1<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019ll send him a Red Bull down if he needs some energising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: Max Verstappen gets further Red Bull boost after first baby arrival<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Such is Red Bull\u2019s alleged belief that McLaren have tricks to cool their tyres, it is being claimed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,225,1710,12,226,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-71132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-mclaren","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-red-bull","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114443901133984943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}