Red Bull Christian Horner Employed Shrewd Tactics to Solve Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez’s Heated Altercation

Red Bull enjoyed a fantastic 2022 season as they won the double championship. Despite that, the team experienced some instability in their camp. After the Milton Keynes side was penalized for exceeding the budget cap, they soon encountered another problem at the Brazilian Grand Prix, between the teams’ drivers, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, which Christian Horner helped them overcome by pulling a smart trick.

Up until the Sao Paulo race, everything was going well for the Austrian team. To quickly recap, Sergio Perez was competing with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for second place in the driver’s standings, but Max Verstappen refused to give up his P6 spot and two extra points to his teammate at Interlagos, even thought he had won the championship at that point. This ultimately displeased the Mexican driver.

There were rumors that the issue was becoming more serious, but thanks to the skilled team principal who came up with a strategy, where both the drivers were pushed to sit down and sort things out.

While talking to Speedcafe TV Christian Horner said, “There are certain things that your drivers have the right to discuss things you know, them in private, between themselves. Not every conversation has to be covered through digital media and so on and the drivers had a good conversation after the race in Brazil. The air was absolutely clear.”

“You could see that by the time they arrived in Abu Dhabi and I think you know this has been a phenomenal pairing for Red bull the success that they’ve achieved over the last couple of seasons, their joint performance,” he added.

It was also believed that Max Verstappen held off on giving the Mexican driver his spot out of retaliation as Sergio Perez allegedly rammed his car into the wall during qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix, which prevented the Dutchman from recording his fastest time. However, these are just speculations.

READ MORE: After 18 Years of the Red Bull Experience, Horner Snubs It All as Max Verstappen & Sergio Perez Take the Crown

The mighty Red Bull team has consistently had lions in their driver roster, which has made it extremely challenging for the ringmaster to control the situation. However, Horner is a shrewd employer who knows how to handle such a scenario. Before any hostility, he had already put an end to a heated dispute between Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel as well.

Christian Horner once used a masterstroke to end the hostility between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber

Red Bull was a dominant force in 2010, and we saw the team’s successful tandem compete in that season. The relationship between them became strained because both drivers wanted the top spot. When the two clashed in Istanbul, the situation deteriorated rapidly, forcing Vettel to retire from the race. But team leader Horner brought them both to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital to enhance their relationship.

Talking on the High-Performance podcast, Horner revealed how he wiped out the strained relations between his drivers. He said “And I thought ‘I need to deflate this, I need to put this into perspective.’ At the end of the day, we’re not saving lives, we’re a sport that’s for entertainment. So I got both drivers and I took them, with David Coulthard actually, to Great Ormond Street to meet some of the kids that were having a tough time and also, importantly, the parents.”

Adding further he said, “That was real-life issues, and it just demonstrated that, okay, we’ve got it pretty good and [compared to] these challenges that these poor children and parents have, what we do is nothing.”

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Both their current drivers had a fantastic season this year, winning 17 of the 22 races they competed in. With this, they displayed total dominance. That being said, do you believe Daniel Ricciardo’s inclusion in the squad will mount more pressure on Sergio Perez?