Red Bull has responded to McLaren's claim that the new engine fitted to Max Verstappen's car for the race compromised the budget cap regulations.

The Austrian team made the change after the Dutchman failed to make it out of Q1. Starting from the pitlane as a result of the change he eventually finished third, less than a second behind Kimi Antonelli, and 5s ahead of championship rival Oscar Piastri.

Andrea Stella was not happy.

"To be honest, these kind of power unit changes, they challenge the regulations," said the Italian. "I will be interested in understanding if the cost of this engine now goes in the cost cap or not.

"If the engine was changed for performance reasons, it should go in the cost cap," he insisted. "So let's see if this is the case, not that I will be able to see, as it's all on the Red Bull side. But this is also one reason why we wouldn't do it, because it would end up in the cost cap."

"I'm not surprised someone has to sort of roll a hand grenade into the situation," Red Bull's chief engineer, Paul Monaghan told reporters in Las Vegas today. "Fine. If the situation were around the other way, we could do the same.

"What we did is defendable," he insisted, "it's legitimate and if you go back through, even this generation of cars from say '22 to this year, people have made engine changes. There's nothing unusual in it.

"I don't think it's a grey area," he continued. "As far as I'm concerned, we justified to ourselves what we were going to do. If we're questioned on it, fine, we will justify it."

Asked about McLaren's claim, FIA technical director, Nikolas Tombazis said: "What we've not been keen to get involved in, as the FIA at the moment, is a situation where when there's an engine change, we have to argue with the team or the PU manufacturer whether a bit of telemetry indicates potentially a reliability issue or not. We don't feel we have the expertise to argue with them whether it's really a reliability or strategic change.

"In some cases it's obviously in one or the other camp," he added. "But when you're in that crossover area, it would be difficult. So this has been a weakness in the current regulations - the combination of Financial plus Technical and Sporting - and it's been an area where we've adopted this approach where we accept these changes without getting into discussion about the impact on the cost cap.

"However, it has been one of the areas where next year, with the cost cap for the PU manufacturers as well as the teams, this matter is resolved, because the PU manufacturers would never find it convenient to make a strategic change, because each time it's going to cost them approximately the cost of an engine - a million, if it's just the internal combustion or whatever. And that will provide a natural mechanism.

"So we think it's a weakness in the current set of regulations, where there's no PU cost cap," he admitted, "but we think it gets resolved completely next year. It will stop being a topic of discussion."

Asked whether the new unit introduced in Brazil threatened Red Bull's budget, Monaghan replied: "I'm not going to answer that question because I'm not a finance regulation expert. I know roughly what we need to do and what's in and what's out. But I believe our actions we can defend, and there will not be a penalty against us at the end of the year for it.

"That would be an answer with my knowledge on it," he added. "I don't want to speculate as to how we're treating it within the financial regulations, because I may get it wrong and then I look even more of an idiot than normal. So I'll leave it at that, if I may."

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