Horner hits back after Newey 'inexperience' comments

Christian Horner has hit back at Adrian Newey’s comments that the 'lack of experience' at Red Bull exacerbated the issues with the RB20 during the 2024 season.

The 66-year-old confirmed his exit from Red Bull last year, in a shock announcement from Newey in what had been an already difficult year for Red Bull.

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Not only had team principal Horner faced accusations of alleged ‘inappropriate behaviour’ towards a female colleague, allegations he was cleared of, but the performance of the RB20 also began to decline in 2024.

Max Verstappen faced a winless streak in 2024 that lasted from the Spanish Grand Prix until Brazil, but the Dutchman’s world title heroics were not enough to save Red Bull from a third place finish in the constructors’ championship.

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Newey later announced that he would be joining Aston Martin from 2025 in a shock move, while Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley also quit the team to join up with a rival outfit.

Following his exit from Red Bull, Newey has since revealed his concerns over how the 2024 car became progressively harder to drive, and how a lack of experience rendered Red Bull unable to deal with this issue.

"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," Newey said to 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."

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Since Newey issued these comments, Horner has responded detailing that the problem with the car was more ‘deep-rooted’ than its issues in 2024.

"I’m not sure, I haven’t seen those comments, but I think the issues are more deep-rooted than just last year," Horner said at the F1 75 Live event.

"When you really dig into the data and some of the characteristics, you start to see them much earlier than that, certainly during 2023.

"It was a matter of unravelling it to understand what were the contributing factors to having a very peaky performance. I think that’s where the team have worked very hard to understand that and address it."

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