Red Bull boss Christian Horner has defended Max Verstappen after the World Champion’s strong comments on team radio during the Hungarian GP.
Verstappen complained about the car and the strategy he’d been given at various points during a hectic race to an eventual fifth place.
He was involved in controversy when passing Lando Norris off-track on the first lap and again when he collided with Lewis Hamilton later in the race.
While Verstappen has never held back while talking to his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase on this occasion he was particularly forceful with his complaints.
“Max was frustrated,” said Horner. “Which you can understand. He has a very direct line of communication with his engineer. So, yeah that’s something that they’ll discuss between the two of them.”
At one stage Lambiase used the word “childish”, which Horner insisted was related not to Verstappen himself but to other teams calling for a penalty following the clash with Hamilton.
“I think that GP at that point, actually wasn’t referring to Max,” he said. “I think he was referring to others on the radio complaining about a penalty. So I don’t think GP’s reference at that point was in reference to Max.
“So others obviously were goading for penalties, because obviously the stewards are listening to the radio as well.
“They’ve been together for eight years. There’s things that we could have done better in the race today, but it’s something that we’ll talk about as a team.”
Horner also downplayed suggestions that Verstappen’s performance may have been affected by participating in an online Spa GT race into the early hours of Sunday morning.
“I think people draw conclusions,” he said. “Max knows what’s required. He knows what it takes to drive a Grand Prix car and to win Grands Prix and be a world champion.”
“As a team we always work as a team, and whatever discussions of how to improve will always not take place in public.”
Recounting Verstappen’s run to fifth Horner noted that he suffered when running behind other cars.
“It was very hard to follow in a dirty air today, and probably more so than we expected,” he said. “Obviously at the start he made a position. We felt that it was a racing incident. Three had got into the corner, Max ran out of the road.
“And under the ‘let them race’ mantra, we thought it looked okay. But as soon as it goes to the stewards, at that point, the feeling is that you’re probably going to get a penalty.”
“So that’s why we conceded the place back to Lando. So then you’re really in the dirty air.”
Horner said that Verstappen was competitive at some stages a race that saw a variety of strategies in play.
“Lewis, with his two sets of hard tyres, went very early,” he noted. “We were considering going that early, but at that point you’re racing for third, and with the two hard tyres, he had the ability to shuffle his race that early. So we felt go longer, give an over overlap advantage.”
“And actually on the hard tyre you can see that Max was competitive, was strong, certainly compared to the McLaren. So he caught Lewis quickly, and then unfortunately, in the dirty air got stuck, as Lewis started to really drop off.
“So if we’d have got past Lewis at that point, then we may have been able to have a go at one of the McLarens at the end of the race.
“Because of the wake and being stuck in the dirty air and dropping off both he and Charles pit early again. So we then go for a nine lap overlap, and you can see again his pace is very, very strong, and he picks off Leclerc.”
Regarding the clash with Hamilton he said: “I think a racing incident with Lewis is probably the best way to describe it. And then we picked up some damage after the car has gone through the air.
“So a frustrating race. I think when you look at a race plot now it’s ifs, buts and maybes. I think probably the thing we underestimated was how tricky it was in the dirty air, and it was that section of the race there that did the most damage for us.”
