Toto Wolff has pondered F1’s position on the outcome of the investigation into Christian Horner. The Red Bull team principal was cleared of any wrongdoing on Wednesday after a probe into misconduct allegations, but there was little transparency offered to onlookers.

The 50-year-old had been under investigation throughout the month of February after an unnamed female employee made allegations of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ against Horner.

However, the Red Bull boss continued with his duties, attending the RB20 launch event and then standing in the garage during pre-season testing in Bahrain. 

On Wednesday, he took a flight with Helmut Marko to the Sakhir International Circuit and was later cleared of any wrongdoing when Red Bull released a statement confirming the conclusion of the investigation, preventing an appeal from the employee. 

After calling for ‘transparency’ during pre-season testing last week, Mercedes boss Wolff was left frustrated off the back of Red Bull’s verdict. Speaking in Bahrain, he noted: “My personal opinion is we can’t really look at the behind the curtain.

“At the end of the day there is a lady in an organisation that has spoken to HR and said there is an issue and it was investigated and yesterday the sport has received a message ‘it’s all fine. We’ve looked at it.’

“I believe that with the sport as a global sport, on such critical topics, it needs more transparency and I wonder what the sport’s position is? We are competitors, we are a team and we can have our own personal opinions or not. But it’s more like a general reaction or action that we as a sport need. We need to assess what is right in that situation, what is wrong.”

The Mercedes boss went on to add: “We are being asked questions as competitors here and are we talking as competitors? Are we talking with the right moral approach, with the values based on the speculations that are out there?

“But I just simply think that as a sport, we cannot afford to leave things in the opaque on critical topics like this because it’s going to catch us out eventually.

“We are in a super transparent world eventually, things are going to happen and I think we have to. The organisation has the duty to say, ‘Well, we’ve looked at it and it’s okay and then we can move on.’ And I think it’s sometimes very short-sighted to try to suppress it but [I am] not saying this has happened.

“We’re standing from the outside and just looking at statements or press releases or timelines. It just seems that it’s a bit not as modern as things go in this world, in the real world out there. But maybe in Formula One, we just have a little problem and we think that’s okay.”