McLaren: Mercedes using 'safety' argument to serve their own purposes

New regulations were outlined in July which would result in F1 cars becoming “faster and more aggressive looking” from 2017 onwards, with a projected improvement in lap time of up to five seconds.

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery has already said up to half of that gain could be found from the tyres alone, with wider tyres set to be introduced as a result of the changes.

However, while publicly backing any changes Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has voiced concerns over the new regulations, saying there could be safety worries if Pirelli is unable to produce tyres which will allow cornering speeds to increase greatly.

“We believe it needs to be a competitive platform,” Wolff said. “We believe it needs more teams to be competitive, more teams to win races, it makes the whole thing more attractive to us. We have a good setup and good organisation and we will take on every challenge.

“If it is more aero then we will take the challenge on as long as Pirelli is able to do tyres that can cope with that. If it is about changing some of the other regulations we will also be on board, it just needs to be reasonable.”

In response to the concerns from Mercedes, Boullier was blunt in his assessment of the motives behind the opposition to the regulations.

Asked if McLaren shares Mercedes’ concerns, Boullier replied: “Not really.

“I guess this is the usual game where you want to stop some changes so you just argue and going the safety way is pretty desperate from Mercedes.”

It was McLaren's very own legendary team boss Ron Dennis who first dubbed Formula 1 "The Piranha Club", referring to the teams' tireless efforts to undermine each other in every possible way. So when a McLaren chief debunks Toto Wolff's "safety" concerns, suggesting that they're purely self-interest, it's likely that he knows exactly what he's talking about.