Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has no doubts that Max Verstappen will turn his recent run of bad form and incidents around in the upcoming races.
Verstappen collided with Sebastian Vettel on lap 43 of the Chinese Grand Prix while chasing down the Ferrari driver for third position. The collision pitched both men into a spin; Vettel went on to finish eighth, while Verstappen was subsequently hit with a 10-second time penalty which dropped him from fourth to fifth.
The Dutchman has endured a difficult start to the season with several high-profile errors. A spin at Turn 1 in the early stages of the Australian Grand Prix and contact with Lewis Hamilton in Bahrain has meant Verstappen has just 18 points to his name after three rounds.
Horner thinks the China incident will serve as a wake-up call.
« His talent is extremely obvious, his bravery and racing instinct is not in doubt, » Horner said. « His judgement today, he was too impatient. He will have for sure learned from that. I have no doubt of that.
When asked if it will « sink in » for Verstappen that he needs to change his racing approach, Horner replied: « It will. I’m fully confident that he’s a phenomenal talent and he’s smart enough to recognise areas that he needs to work on and I have no doubt that he will address it. We’ve already discussed it . »
Horner made the comparison between Verstappen and former Red Bull driver Vettel, who endured a similar period in 2009 and 2010 where the German was infamously labelled as a »crash kid » by former McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh.
« I was talking with him after the race, he put his hand up, he’s apologised to Sebastian. He did that immediately as they got out of the cars. Sebastian and I spoke with after the race and he appreciated Max had apologised to him. Yes he’s made some mistakes but I remember when we had Sebastian at a similar stage of his career, it wasn’t uncommon that he also made some mistakes.’
« He will have learned an awful lot from today and put that to good use in the coming races because we have a very quick car as we’ve demonstrated today. »
The clash also earned Verstappen two penalty points on his superlicence, taking his currently tally to five. If drivers accumulate 12 over a 12-month period, they are automatically hit with a one-race ban.
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/23183712/christian-horner-confident-max-verstappen-learn-recent-errors
