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"Testgate is the headache that won&amp;#039;t go away for Formula 1. In an exclusive interview with Road &amp;amp;amp; Track at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Infiniti Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner claimed that his team declined an offer to conduct the same controversial tire test as Mercedes AMG Petronas on grounds of righteous adherence to the rules. &amp;quot;Pirelli asked us, we discussed it internally, and we didn&amp;#039;t take it any further,&amp;quot; Horner says. &amp;quot;We felt that it was in clear contravention of the rules. Listen, if you read the rules on tire testing, they&amp;#039;re pretty clear. That&amp;#039;s the one area of the rules that are clear. The rest are pretty gray, but this one is clear.&amp;quot; That thickens the plot, doesn&amp;#039;t it? If Pirelli offered the test to Red Bull in addition to Mercedes, one has to wonder if the opportunity was shopped to other teams as well. The F1 sanctioning body will convene a tribunal to determine which players\u2014the FIA, Mercedes AMG Petronas, and Pirelli\u2014are hiding what. Did the FIA know? Was Pirelli acting independently? It&amp;#039;s generally agreed that the FIA won&amp;#039;t blame itself for this mess, and that Mercedes, clawing for championship points, will be given a pass. That leaves Pirelli to bear the brunt of the blame and potentially take the fall for hosting the surreptitious three-day tire test last month at Circuit de Catalunya. The entire matter may have never even come to light if Mercedes pilot Lewis Hamilton hadn&amp;#039;t accidentally let the cat out of the bag during a drivers&amp;#039; meeting at the Monaco Grand Prix. Horner and Red Bull, meanwhile, went about the business of building on their 2013 championship leads. Sebastian Vettel obliterated the field in Montreal yesterday, crossing the line over 14 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Fernando Alonso. So complete was Vettel&amp;#039;s victory that he lapped Kimi Raikkonen, who subsequently dropped to third place in the championship points after his 9th-place finish. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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