Horner Reveals Precautionary Advice He’d Give to Verstappen When Overtaking Lewis Hamilton

The Max Verstappen – Lewis Hamilton incident at the British Grand Prix stirred an intense level of controversy between the two F1 teams. Christian Horner, of all, was absolutely distraught with the crash, as he blamed it entirely on the eventual race winner, Hamilton.

And after over 2 weeks now, Horner is still reluctant at letting Hamilton off easy. Following the FP2 session in Budapest, the Briton took yet another dig at the 7-time world champion. Only this time, it wasn’t necessarily serious, but more of a joke.

What did the Red Bull boss say?

During the interview, Horner opined how Verstappen could avoid a repeat of Silverstone in the future. He reckoned that the Dutchman should stop overtaking the Mercedes driver around the outside.

“I guess the thing is, as history dictates, don’t be on the outside. The advice must be, ‘make sure you’re there on the inside’. And based on the rollings that we’ve seen, there have to be a consistent application of that, moving forward,” he said.

Hamilton hasn’t had much luck while overtaking a Red Bull around the outside during a race. And it all started with Alex Albon back in 2019 at the Brazilian GP.

The 25-year-old was finally on course to secure his first F1 podium at Sao Paulo, only to be denied by Hamilton, just over a lap away from the chequered flag.

Just a couple of race weekends later at the 2020 Austrian GP, Hamilton clipped Albon’s rear while he was attempting a move around the outside of Turn 4.

Penalties are relatively menial: Horner on stewards’ decision against Lewis Hamilton

Horner opined that the stewards are becoming too “menial“, with their penalties hardly making an impact on the driver at fault. The Briton backed the statement with Hamilton’s British GP incident.

Despite sabotaging his rival’s race and receiving a 10-second time penalty, the 7-time world champion managed to secure the race win.

“Now, we wanna see close and competitive racing between these two drivers. And we wanted to make sure make that it was clean racing,” he said.

“I think hard but fair is, you know, what the sport is all about. But, what we don’t wanna see is a whole bunch of incidents like we’ve seen, because the penalties are relatively menial.”

Overall, one might believe that Hamilton‘s incidents with drivers attempting maneuvers around the outside of a turn are a mere coincidence. However, will the Mercedes driver cause a similar episode later this season to bolster Horner’s claim? Only time will tell.

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