Christian Horner backs Max Verstappen after ‘frustrating’ Hungarian Grand Prix

It was a Sunday to forget for Max Verstappen in Budapest.

The Red Bull driver was forced to give a position back to Lando Norris in the early going of the Hungarian Grand Prix, and his day seemed to roll downhill from there. Verstappen was heard airing his frustration over the radio regarding some strategic incidents that occurred during the race, including some of his rivals undercutting him with early pit stops.

By the time Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton came into contact in the late stages any notion of Verstappen challenging either Norris or Oscar Piastri had fallen by the wayside, and the Red Bull driver brought his RB20 home in fifth position.

Verstappen’s frustration continued into his comments to the media, and elsewhere in the paddock Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner was left to defend his driver after a “frustrating” Hungarian Grand Prix.

“We felt go longer, [to get] an overlap advantage – and actually on the hard tyre you can see Max was competitive and strong, especially compared to the McLarens. So he caught Lewis [Hamilton] quickly then unfortunately in the dirty air got stuck as Lewis started to really drop off,” described Horner.

“So, if we’d have got past Lewis at that point we may have been able to have a go at one of the McLarens. Then [in the final stint] he picked off [Charles] Leclerc, and I think a racing incident with Lewis is the right way to describe it, and he picked up some damage after the car flew through the air, so a frustrating race,” continued the Red Bull boss.

“The thing we underestimated was how tricky it was in the dirty air – that did the most damage for us.”

Horner also elaborated on Red Bull’s decision to instruct Verstappen to give the position back to Norris in the opening laps of the race. Race stewards had noted that the overtake was “under further investigation,” but rather than wait for their findings Red Bull took action on their own.

“At the start, he made a position, we felt it was a racing incident, three into the corner, naturally run out of road,” said Horner. “We thought it looked okay but as soon as it goes to the stewards, at that point the view is you are probably going to get a penalty so that’s why we conceded a place back to Lando.”

Horner was then asked about the radio messages between Verstappen and his race engineer, Gianpiero “GP” Lambiase. For example, after a pit stop, Verstappen returned to the track with the instructions to bring the tires up to temperature slowly. When Lambaise cracked over the radio “[w]ell, that’s some gentle introduction” following a thunderous lap from Verstappen the driver fired back “[n]o, don’t give me that bulls*** now. You guys give me the fu***** strategy, OK? I’m trying to rescue myself. For fu*** sake.”

Horner outlined how any necessary discussions would take place in-house.

“Look, Max was frustrated, which you can understand. He has a very direct line of communication with his engineer so, yeah, it’s something that they’ll discuss between the two of them,” Horner said.

“They’ve been together for eight years and yes there are things we could have done better in the race today that we’ll talk about as a team.

“I think everybody sees we need to find more performance, and everybody is working hard to do that and we’ll have whatever discussions behind closed doors.”

Verstappen’s frustration on Sunday may be the clearest sign yet that a true title fight is underway in Formula 1. With McLaren locking out the front row with Piastri and Norris, the Woking-based team pulled to within 51 points at the front of the field in the F1 Constructors’ Championship. While Verstappen still holds a sizeable 76-point lead over Norris in the Drivers’ Championship, neither title is truly done and dusted.

Meaning there could be more frustrating days ahead for Verstappen.