Horner offers response to striking Newey Red Bull 'inexperienced' claim

Christian Horner has offered his response to Adrian Newey's claim that Red Bull was 'not concerned' and lacked 'experience' to deal with the troubles of its 2024 car.

The RB20 machine started quickly winning seven of the first 10 races before an alarming drop in performance across the summer, by which time Newey had already stepped down from his role as chief technical officer.

Red Bull had come off the back of a 2023 season in which Max Verstappen had won 19 of 22 races, with Sergio Perez adding a further two for a near-perfect season, but Newey felt problems were seeping into the car during that season, especially with how Perez was not able to cope with the difficult machine to the extent Verstappen could.

"It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many of the people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about," he told Auto Motor und Sport. 

"From what I can see from the outside – but I don’t know – the guys at Red Bull, this is no criticism but I think they just perhaps through lack of experience kept going in that same direction, and the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive."

When these comments were put to Horner by RacingNews365, he countered the claim.

"I haven't seen those comments," Horner replied when asked by RacingNews365 for his take on Newey's comments.

"But the issues are more deep-rooted than last year, I think when you dig into the data and some of the characteristics, you start to see them much earlier, and definitely during 2023. 

"It was a matter of unravelling it to understand what were the contributing factors to having peaky performance and that it is where the team has worked very hard to understand and address it."