MIAMI GARDENS, Fla, (AP) — McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown wants the FIA to adopt a rule that prohibits teams from making baseless allegations against their rivals.
Brown floated the idea after using a water bottle on pit lane that had multiple large “ TIRE WATER” labels affixed on the bottle. It was Brown's way of trolling Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner, who allegedly complained to Formula 1's governing body that McLaren was using water to manage its tire temperature.
″(The water bottle) was poking fun at a serious issue, which is teams have historically made allegations of other teams. Most recently, one team focuses on that strategy more than others,” Brown said Saturday at the Miami Grand Prix.
“There’s a proper way to protest a team at the end of the race, and you have to make it formal, disclose where it comes from, put some money down," he continued. “I think that process should be extended to all allegations to stop the frivolous allegations which are intended only to be a distraction.”
The protest policy F1 currently has in place requires a monetary deposit from the team that makes a formal complaint. Brown now wants the same process to apply to publicly aired concerns from rival teams so that the allegations are “put on paper” and also to curb the practice.
“If you had to put up some money and put on paper and not backchannel what your allegations are, I think that would be a way to clean up the bogus allegations that happened in this sport, which are not very sporting," Brown said. "And if someone does believe there’s a technical issue, by all means you’re entitled to it. Put it on paper, put your money down. It should come against your cost cap if it turns out you’re wrong, and I think that will significantly stop the bogus allegations that come from some teams in the sport.”
Brown said the pay to complain fee should be “meaningful” to be effective, and, if an allegation is proved true, the money would be returned to the complaining team.
“It needs to be meaningful from a ‘I’m choosing to spend money on that instead of my own racing car’ (point of view). We’re all right at the limit of the budget gap," Brown said. "I know we will not waste a dollar on anything that we don’t think brings performance, so it’s probably 25 grand.
“Would I spend $25,000 on a distraction tactic or develop my own race car? I’d spend it on my race car all day long.”
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia steers his car during the Sprint race qualifying session at the Formula One Miami Grand Prix auto race, Friday, May 2, 2025, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City nurses returned to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.
Union officials say roughly 15,000 nurses walked off the job Monday morning at multiple campuses of three hospital systems: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai.
The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.
New York City, like the U.S. as a whole, has had an active flu season. The city logged over 32,000 cases during the week ending Dec. 20 — the highest one-week tally in at least 20 years — though numbers have since declined, the Health Department said last Thursday.
Roy Permaul, an intensive care unit nurse who was among those picketing in front of Mount Sinai's flagship campus in Manhattan, said he and his colleagues are prepared to walk off the job as long as needed to secure a better contract.
But Dania Munoz, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai, stressed that the union’s fight wasn’t just about better wages.
“We deserve fair pay, but this is about safety for our patients, for ourselves and for our profession,” the 31-year-old Bronx resident said. “The things that we’re fighting for, we need. We need health care. We need safety. We need more staffing.”
The New York State Nurses Association said Tuesday that none of the hospitals have agreed to additional bargaining sessions with the union since their last meetings on Sunday.
It also complained that Mount Sinai, which operates seven hospitals, unlawfully fired three nurses hours after the strike started and improperly disciplined 14 others who had spoken out about workplace violence or discussed the union and contract negotiations with their colleagues.
Mount Sinai spokespersons said Tuesday the claims were “not accurate” and that they would provide more information later. Mt. Sinai has said approximately 20% of its nurses reported for work on the first day of the strike rather than picketing.
Meanwhile, Montefiore Medical Center said it has “not canceled even one patient’s access to care” during the work stoppage. The city Emergency Management Department said it hasn’t seen major impacts to patient care so far.
The hospital system also criticized unionized nurses for seeking “troubling proposals” such as demanding that nurses not be terminated, even if found to be compromised by drugs or alcohol while on the job.
The union said Montefiore was “blatantly mischaracterizing” one of its basic workplace proposals, which would have added protections for nurses dealing with substance use disorders and which has already been adopted in other hospitals around the state.
The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.
As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for safe, manageable workloads.
The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive.
On Monday, the city's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.”
Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nurses strike outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
