Tensions rise as Horner warned after ‘rogue’ marshal claim
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was handed an official warning by the FIA and forced to issue an apology to a steward he accused of being “rogue”, as the tension of a remarkable title battle boiled over once again in Qatar yesterday.
Horner was incensed after his driver, Max Verstappen, was handed a five-place grid penalty ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix for ignoring waved yellow flags in qualifying on Saturday.
The decision over Verstappen’s penalty, as well as one awarded to Mercedes’s Valtteri Bottas, was only communicated to teams around an hour and a half before the race started, adding to the drama.
Horner was furious. “We need grown-ups making grown-up decisions,” he told Sky Sports F1. “We’re really struggling to understand it. It looks like a complete balls-up.”
Explaining that their understanding was the governing body had effectively told drivers to “play on”, he added: “I think it’s just a rogue marshal that stuck a flag out. He’s not instructed to by the FIA – they’ve got to have control of the marshals. It’s as simple as that.
“That’s a crucial blow in the championship for us. We’re now starting P7 at a track you can’t overtake at. That is massive.”
Verstappen went on to finish second in the race behind Lewis Hamilton, which meant the Dutch driver managed to hang on to an eightpoint lead in the drivers’ championship with two races remaining.
But Horner was afterwards summoned to the stewards’ room for an alleged breach of the International Sporting Code. He was duly issued with an official warning, while an offer to attend the 2022 FIA International Stewards Programme in early February was “unreservedly”
accepted. Horner had already retracted his comments made to Sky Sports by that stage.
“I’d like to make it clear that marshals do a wonderful job and our sport could not operate without them volunteering their time,” he said. “My frustration in what I voiced earlier wasn’t a marshal’s [fault], it was a circumstance, and so if any offence was taken by any individual then obviously I apologise.”
Tensions between Formula Ones’s two leading teams have been mounting in recent weeks, with Red Bull adamant that their rivals’ pace in Mexico and Brazil was “not normal” and petitioning the FIA to increase its load tests.
Mercedes, meanwhile, had tried unsuccessfully to have Verstappen punished for his driving in Interlagos last weekend, when Hamilton was run off the track.