“Who was the first to call Michael? It wasn’t me,” Christian Horner defends himself after being criticized for pressuring Michael Masi in Abu Dhabi
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Red Bull Racing's Team Principal Christian Horner
Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will infamously go down in the history of Formula 1. The duo of Christian Horner and Max Verstappen pipped Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton for the driver’s championship in one of the most, if not the most, controversial race in the history of the sport. Abu Dhabi will always be remembered with a pinch of salt doesn’t matter which camp you belong to.
Max Verstappen wouldn’t have ideally wanted to win the championship and Lewis Hamilton obviously wouldn’t have wanted to end the season on such a sour note. While Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were battling it out on the track, Christian Horner and Toto Wolff had been doing that from their respective pit boxes as they left no stones unturned to edge the other.
Christian Horner and Toto Wolff put Michael Masi under immense pressure to get the decision in their favor. While Toto Wolff wanted the race to end behind the racing car and didn’t want any racing action after Nicholas Latifi’s crash, on the other hand, Christian Horner was heard saying, “You only need one racing lap.”
Christian Horner vigorously defends himself after facing criticism following his antics in Abu Dhabi
We definitely can’t say that one applied more pressure than the other one. It was equally wrong to keep chipping away at the race director Michael Masi.
On the criticism faced after his antics in Abu Dhabi, Christian Horner replied, “Who was the first to call Michael? It wasn’t me. I’m only responding to the pressure being applied on him that I can hear in my ear from a rival team. It’s my job as the principal of the team that I represent to defend it.”
“I think it was probably less than the pressure that our rivals were pushing on to not have a safety car. Or to back-track a lap.”
“It would make no difference to the outcome of the championship if they’d got all seven out of the way.” As reported by BBC.
The team principals shouldn’t have been allowed to talk to the race director in the first place and even if they did, the conversation should have been kept confidential. Since that wasn’t done it’ll be harsh to blame one more than the other when both of them were evidently trying to do the exact same thing.
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