Horner reveals Verstappen apologised to team after Russell clash in Spain as he assesses Red Bull’s strategy call

Christian Horner has revealed that Max Verstappen apologised to the Red Bull team following his collision with George Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix, an incident that saw the Dutchman drop from P5 to P10 at the chequered flag due to a 10-second time penalty.

When a Safety Car was called late in the race following a mechanical issue for Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, most of the field took the opportunity to pit. This included Verstappen, but the World Champion re-emerged with a set of hard tyres on the RB21 – the only option he had remaining – which put him at a disadvantage in comparison to his rivals on the soft rubber.

Charles Leclerc overtook him for third at the restart before Russell attempted to make a move, which resulted in Verstappen having to take to the escape road after brief contact between them. Red Bull then instructed the Dutch driver to give the position back to Russell, leading to a second moment of contact that earned Verstappen a 10-second time penalty.

Verstappen admitted on social media the next day that the move “was not right and shouldn’t have happened”, and Horner has since disclosed that the driver also offered his apologies over what happened to the team.

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“It happened in the debrief,” Horner explained to Sky Sports F1 as the Canadian Grand Prix weekend got underway. “Obviously it was a very frustrating race for him and of course for the team. It was one of those things, he accepted that with hindsight I’m sure he wouldn’t have done it, but there was a whole bunch of circumstances that led up to it.

“You always talk about these things in private and Max apologised to the team. He knows that the penalty that went with that was severe, and you’re always learning in this life and there will be lessons taken from that race for sure.”

Horner went on to suggest that the passion with which Verstappen drives bears comparison to some of the sport’s past World Champions.

“Look, he’s a driver that drives with a huge amount of emotion, and part of what gives him the brilliance he has is the emotion that he drives with,” the Briton reflected. “He wears his heart on his sleeve and occasionally you make misjudgements – we’ve seen it with all the greats, whether it was [Ayrton] Senna or [Michael] Schumacher, all the great champions over the years.

“I think the most important thing was he came back, he immediately apologised to the team, and it was frustrating because obviously he lost a lot of points on that day.”

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Horner was then pushed on whether Red Bull made the right calls, in terms of asking Verstappen to concede position to Russell as well as pitting him for the hard tyre rather than leaving him on track.

“You’ve got to rewind it right back,” the Team Principal said. “We went on to a three-stop strategy which was playing out beautifully – it was the better strategy to be on, but of course the danger with that is it leaves you with very little tyre choice available in the event of a Safety Car in that last stint.

“So the choice the team faced was either stay out on the eight-lap-old tyres that he had that he’d smashed pretty hard trying to get an undercut on Lando [Norris], at which point both McLarens would have had a free stop, he would have had track position, but they would have easily eaten him up, or do we take a new hard?

“As a team we decided to take that new tyre versus a heavily used soft tyre. The risk with that was the warm-up; the Safety Car stayed out a reasonable length of time, Max had a big snap on the restart – he did amazingly well to gather that up, which then gave Charles a run at him.

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“His next lap was actually the fastest lap he did of the race, but it’s all marginal decisions that you have to make in a split second. Of course, with hindsight you could say if we’d have stayed out on the softs we’d have probably finished third – we’d have had track position.

“Would Charles have passed us? I don’t know, possibly not, but you can only make the decisions that you have at the moment in time. With a new set of tyres available versus an eight-lap-old scrubbed, it seemed a reasonable decision.”

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The fact that Verstappen received three penalty points for the incident with Russell has put him just one point away from a one-race suspension. But when asked who the team would replace him with should this happen – following the news that Red Bull Junior Arvid Lindblad was recently granted a Super Licence – Horner suggested that the squad have various options.

“Arvid Lindblad is at the very beginning of his journey in Formula 1, having been granted that licence,” he stated. “First of all it’s a situation that we want to desperately try and avoid, and should it come we’ve got enough drivers to draw upon from the pool of Red Bull drivers. We’ll deal with it if it happened.”