Horner fury as Renault engine packs up

Budapest – Red Bull boss Christian Horner blasted his team’s engine supplier Renault yesterday after Dutch driver Max Verstappen (left) retired from the Hungarian Grand Prix just five laps into the race.

Verstappen’s expletive-laden reaction over the radio was largely bleeped out for the worldwide TV audience but Horner expressed his dismay in a more measured but equally forceful manner.

“Cruel luck for Max, it’s an engine issue. I suppose no surprise really,” he added.

“I’m not going to get drawn into saying too much. We pay millions of pounds for these engines and for first class, or state-of-the-art, product and you can see it’s quite clearly some way below that.”

Horner said he would let Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul “come up with the excuses afterwards.”

Red Bull are ditching Renault at the end of the season and switching to Honda from 2019.

Renault powered the former champions to drivers’ and constructor’s titles for four years in a row between 2010 and 2013 but the relationship frayed in the current V6 turbo hybrid era.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo retired in Germany last week due to a power unit problem.

It subsequently emerged that the Australian had been unable to take all the new components Red Bull had wanted because Renault made only three of the six items available. The normal strategy would have been to change everything.

“Engine failure can happen at any time, even with a new engine,” Abiteboul said after the Hockenheim race. – Reuters