Why Aston Martin feared “war of words” with Red Bull’s Horner

Eyes were on Aston Martin after they introduced their B-spec car at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Aston Martin’s car looked very similar to Red Bull’s RB18 - something that caught the attention of Horner and the Red Bull team.

In response, Horner was pictured on the team’s pit wall with a green can of Red Bull energy drink, a little dig at Aston Martin’s ‘green bull’.

The controversy didn’t last too long as Aston Martin initially still struggled for performance while Red Bull romped away in the title race.

Krack denied that Aston Martin had copied Red Bull during 2022.

“Frustration is the wrong word because we knew that, we anticipated that this will happen,” he said. “I think we would have maybe taken it more on board if there was any truth in it. We really did our stuff.

"We knew that this might come and I think if you look back, we were quite relaxed about it and there was no war of words from our side. It calmed down in the meantime and we have moved on."

Red Bull were particularly concerned about it because former technical chief Dan Fallows had made the switch to Aston Martin.

Voicing his concerns at the time, Horner said: “It is quite a thing to instruct your team to come up with a very close-looking clone of our car. A few people have moved over the winter period, and what you can’t control is what they take in their heads.

“But what would be of grave concern to us would be if any IP had in any way changed hands.”