A new technical directive will force teams to slow down their pit stops over safeꦕty concerns from next month’s Hungarian Gr🥃and Prix, requiring a delay of 0.2s between the completion of the pit stop and the car being released.

Rꦐed Bull has won the DHL fastest pit stop award five times out of the opening seven races so far this season, with three of their pit stops clocking at under two seconds.

And Red Bꦉull team principal Horner believes it is a deliberate attempt to n🔜egate his side’s advantage.

“The technical directꦅive is certainly very wordy and you always have to question whether it’s a cha🌸nge of regulation,” Horner said on Friday at the Styrian Grand Prix.

“But I suppose we have been very competitive, we’ve got the world record on pit stops, we’ve had the ༒majority of the fastest stops, and it’s not by accident.

“I find it a little disappointing because it’s the duty of the competitor to make sure that the car is safe. The penalty for a wheel not being fixed i🐠s that you have to stop the car immediately, so it’s a brutal punishment if you haven’t got all four wheels securely and safely fastened.

“So what the technica🍷l 🅺directive is trying to achieve, I’m not quite sure. I think there’s an awful lot of complexity to it.

“Of course when you are in a competitive situation, ifﷺ you can’t be beaten, then the most obvious thing is for your competitors to try and slow you down. And that’s obꦡviously what’s happening here.”

It is the latest in a line of technical directiv🍒es introduced in F1 and follows a clarification relating to rear wing aeroelastici𓆉ty that was imposed at the French Grand Prix last time out.

Red Bull has also faced accusations about pushing the boundaries with tyre pressures following Max Verstappen’s♎ failure in Baku.

Asked whether he feels that Red♉ Bull has a target on its back, Horner replied: “I think you can see there’s an awful lot of pointed activity in our direction at the moment, but that comes with the territory of being compet𒁏itive.

“An awful lot of energy is going in to try and sl𝓀ow the car down, which is obviously what happens in a competitive business. It’s something that we are used to but not losing too mucꩵh sleep about.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff stressed he was “not 100% sure” what had prompted ⛄the technical directive but revealed his side raised a query about pit stops around a month ago.

“We enquired with the FIA on a safety mechanism which is related tꦉo a system that we were usi🐟ng and whether that could be optimised,” he explained.

“That happened, I would sa♌y, three or four weeks ago and it was a technology question. Did that trigger anything else? Maybe, I don’t know, but this is the question we’ve asked.”