F1: Mind games at Red Bull

They may say it was not scripted, but it was without doubt coordinated. On Tuesday, Horner and Webber made statements in a press conference that are designed to disturb the McLaren drivers ahead of this weekend's British grand prix.

The teams turn up at Silverstone today but the drivers don't get into the cars until Friday. But unsettling a team is not, always, about unsettling the drivers. And so the attacks published yesterday were aimed at the pit crew and those building and checking the cars, even those loading the trucks.

For most teams, including Red Bull, Silverstone is the real home race, no matter what the national anthem played after a victory might suggest. Mercedes' factory is just eight miles from the track; Force India's is, to all intents and purposes, the track's nearest neighbour. Red Bull, like most of others is a stone's throw away. Mark Webber has a home - nearby and, if home is where the dogs live, then he can be said to be living in England despite his tweets about how nice it is to be "home" when he heads for Aus.

Webber started the press conference with reference to his relationship with his team mate. He didn't say "I'd piss on him if he was on fire," but it was close. "If he was drowning in the ocean, I'd go and help him out," he said. He made no suggestion of any latent friendship: "we don't hate each other's guts" was as close as he came to saying anything nice.

But Webber is not "nice." He's blunt and he says what he thinks. It is perhaps strange to know that this WYSIWYG driver leads the Grand Prix Drivers' Association - something that is usually done by a driver capable of negotiation and smarm - talents that seem outside Webber's repertoire.

He called on the spirit of Piquet and Mansell as evidence that team mates can respect each other but will drive hard, even at the expense of the best result for the team.

"It's not easy to have a beautiful, fuzzy, warm relationship when he (a team mate) is clearly a competitor," he said - and then said that he was talking about Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton. "They are working hard to put a bit of smoke and mirrors up but those two are racing hard. If you are always racing at the front, inevitably it's going to come." He made it plain that he was not saying that the pair would crash into each other. Well, cynics might say that that's been done once this season in such spectacular fashion that any attempt to replicate it would be boring and, frankly, sad.

"You look at say (Lotus drivers) Jarno (Trulli) and Heikki (Kovalainen), there's not much at stake so they are going to get on better," he said without thinking that, for Lotus, what's at stake is every bit as important as winning is at Red Bull and no less effort goes into getting a Lotus onto and around the track as at the teams at the pointy end. Of course, it's harder to drive a Lotus that's just been totalled by Webber running up its blunt end.

So, with his anger at Vettel barely hidden and his simmering annoyance at Kovalainen for having dared to race him for position after his disastrous start in Valencia, and his anguish that the Championship that he deserves is slipping from his grasp, Webber followed the party line.

He almost managed to be nice about Vettel in the same sentence as undermining the McLaren pair: ""What I'm saying is that it's inevitable given what's at stake, they are both hungry, both driven. If I don't care, if I'd got no competition about me, no fire and desire about me, I'd get on with Seb like a house on fire." That is much like saying, as my Northern English pals say "he's a nice lad but his shit stinks."

Rounding off the attack was not Vettel, away on other duties - some may consider deliberately so, so that Webber and Horner could be seen on the same platform and on the same page - but Horner. He said ""It's inevitable ... that in a competitive sport they will be pushing each other and perhaps won't be having so much of a love-in when that does happen. It will only take one small incident for things to flare up between the McLaren drivers, I'm sure."

Well, they had that small incident in Turkey. They had a visible mood, they had a 20 second argument in subdued tones and they went out to the podium as pals. In Valencia, they were back to normal.

Love-in? Not a hope. But working together - for sure. If the Championship comes down to the last couple of races, then maybe - just maybe - there will be fireworks. But both of them know that they can't win the championship in Silverstone. But either of them could lose it.

That's a fact that, in both Turkey and Valencia, Red Bull have overlooked.