Horner quizzed about lack of statement on Piquet slurs

Christian Horner has defended Red Bull’s decision not to issue a statement condemning Nelson Piquet’s racial abuse of Lewis Hamilton.

The seven-time former World Champion was the victim of unacceptable comments from the Brazilian during an interview in a podcast that had recently been reported.

Formula 1 teams and drivers have spoken out against Piquet’s remarks but there was nothing official from Red Bull, who contested an intense World Championship battle with Hamilton’s Mercedes squad last year.

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However, Max Verstappen, who pipped Hamilton to the 2021 Drivers’ title and is the boyfriend of Piquet’s daughter Kelly, said it was “not correct to use these words” in pledging support for the Briton.

Red Bull boss Horner, meanwhile, told Sky F1 his team had already stood up against racism in the preceding days when they sacked their academy’s Formula 2 driver Juri Vips for making a racist comment – which Horner therefore felt had represented their stance on the topic.

“First of all, we are appalled by Nelson’s comments and it’s from an interview from some time ago,” said the Red Bull team principal.

“But we’ve obviously had an instance with one of our young drivers (Vips) earlier, or at the end of last week, and we took very definitive action when he made a racist comment.

“And so we took action and we immediately removed him from the team. So we put out a statement about Juri and this one comes out and we felt we had made a very strong statement through [the] action of actually dropping Juri from the team – [we are] not in any way condoning any form of racism or discrimination.”

Asked about the absence of a specific Red Bull statement regarding