Max Verstappen says he has full faith in Christian Horner, calling the Red Bull team principal “an incredible team boss” after taking pole position at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Horner was the subject of an independent investigation instigated by Red Bull GmbH at the start of this year, with the grievance against him being dismissed on Wednesday. However, with Thursday seeing materials purporting to be evidence from the investigation circulated to senior Formula 1 figures and media, the situation has remained under scrutiny, but Verstappen continued to back the 50-year-old.
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“Listen, when I look at how Christian operates within the team, he has been an incredible team boss, so absolutely, from the performance side of things, you can’t even question that,” Verstappen said. “So that’s what I’m also dealing with.
“I speak to Christian a lot, and also throughout the weekend here, he’s fully committed to the team; he’s also here for the performance. Of course probably a little bit distracted. But we just focus on the performance side of things, and that’s how we all work together.”
Horner took part in specific meetings with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem ahead of qualifying, but Verstappen says it hasn’t been a distraction for the team.
“From my side — and I think what I can see also from the mechanics and the engineers — we are fully focused on the car and the performance here during the weekend. That’s how it should be, I think, and that’s what we continue to do, because it’s not our business — we’re not particularly involved in that. We are here, we are paid to do our job, and that’s what we are doing and that’s also what we love doing. So that’s what we focus on.”
After securing pole position to kick off his title defense, Verstappen believes he’s facing a season where there will be multiple challengers in qualifying.
“I think it was just a very tight qualifying. I think it was just also very tricky conditions with the wind this whole weekend. Just if you can get the lap together immediately, you can find one, one and a half tenths in a corner, and I think it was good for us in Q2, Q3 — especially Q3 I would say, it improved a little bit more.
“But I think throughout the whole of qualifying, you could see the gaps were super close, and I think you never really knew who was going to be on pole heading into Q3. So I think that was very exciting to see.”