MELBOURNE, Australia -- The new Formula One season is less than 48 hours old, but two of its biggest teams have already engaged in a war of words in the paddock.
The team principals of Ferrari and Red Bull went head-to-head in Friday's FIA press conference, arguing over the Italian team's hiring of FIA safety delegate Laurent Mekies.
Ferrari announced last week that Mekies would join its team on September 20 after serving a six-month period of gardening leave. The hiring immediately ruffled feathers among rival teams and comes just months after the spat over Renault's hiring of the FIA's former technical head Marcin Budkowski.
There are concerns that senior members of the FIA joining F1 teams could bring technical secrets that rival outfits told the governing body in confidence.
Renault eventually agreed to extend Budkowski's gardening leave from three months to six, but the signing led to further discussion in F1's Strategy Group about the length of time FIA employees should spend away from employment before starting work with a team in F1.
Red Bull's Christian Horner claims a gentlemen's agreement was reached whereby teams would respect a period of gardening leave of at least 12 months, and was therefore frustrated to hear the news of Mekies' signing.
"For me it is a big deal because the disappointing element about this is that we have a thing called the Strategy Group where the FIA, FOM and all team principals attend and we discussed the Marcin issue where there was great unrest about a key member of the FIA going to a team," Horner explained. "Renault diluted that by putting him on an extended gardening leave but then ensued a conversation about it being unacceptable -- every team found it unacceptable.
"Of course, you are dealing with employment laws across different states and different countries and to try to police legally something like that, it was agreed in the room, that all the lawyers in the world couldn't come up with a contact to police it. But there was an understanding and a clear statement by the teams to say, right, let's have a clear position that there should be at least a period of 12 months in the garden for a member of a team going from either FIA/FOM to a team or from a team to vice-a-versa.
"Certain teams were pushing for that period to be three years, but in the end it was agreed upon being 12 months. What's disappointing is that that meeting was less than six weeks ago, arguably discussions were probably happening at that time, which makes those meetings pointless if we can't agree on something and action it. Of course, you can hide behind saying that it's not in the regulations but as a group we agreed something, it hasn't been adhered to so the question is what is the point of having those meetings?
"I think what's most disappointing about it is that it was Ferrari, or Sergio [Marchionne, Ferrari president], who was pushing for a three-year period. On one had you get a team pushing for a three-year gestation and then a few weeks later we are in this situation. It makes discussions in that forum a waste of time."
Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene defended his team's position, arguing that it stuck to the correct employment law.
"We were respecting absolutely local law, the Swiss local law, where Laurent was hired. Afterwards we went even further than that because we gave him six months of gardening leave. However, having said that, what we have discussed before is that we have signed a confidentiality agreement that means we are not allowed to discuss or share in public what we discuss in the Strategy Group.
"Having said so, I heard comments related to a supposed or so-called 'gentlemen's agreement' and I think they are comments because a 'gentlemen's agreement' on the labour law is illegal. I thought they were comments, just comments and no more than that. I hope."
Sat in between Horner and Arrivabene, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said he did not believe the Mekies hiring was comparable with Budkowski's.
"First of all, I didn't see any gentlemen in the room when we discussed it. Second, it's completely different to Marcin. They are both intelligent engineers, but Marcin was involved in issuing technical directives just a few weeks before he decided to join a team and had a lot of inside [knowledge], and Laurent was involved in a totally different activities that are not as sensitive, in my opinion, as with Marcin's. He is joining the team in seven or eight months from now and for me it is not a big deal."