Christian Horner clarifies “childish” Max Verstappen radio remark after Lewis Hamilton clash

Christian Horner has clarified Gianpiero Lambiase’s “childish” remark which initially appeared to be directed at Max Verstappen following his clash with Lewis Hamilton at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Verstappen was incredibly frustrated with how his race played out, venting his annoyance over team radio.

His engineer, ‘GP’, also seemed to be running out of patience with Verstappen’s complaining.

After his tangle with Hamilton at Turn 1 on Lap 63, Verstappen said over team radio: “He moved under braking!”.

GP replied: “I’m not even going to get into a radio fight with the other teams, Max. We’ll let the stewards do their thing. It’s childish on the radio. Childish.”

Horner has set the record straight on Lambiase’s comment, making it clear that the “childish” remark wasn’t directed at Verstappen.

“I think GP at that point wasn’t referring to Max, he was referring to others on the radio complaining about penalties,” Horner said in Hungary, where Crash.net are present in the paddock.

“So I don’t think GP at that point was in reference to Max. Others are obviously goading for penalties, because obviously the stewards are listening to the radio as well.

“They've been together for eight years and yeah there's things that we could have done better in the race today, but it's something that we'll talk about as a team.”

Horner admitted that he understands Verstappen's and any issues between him and his race engineer will be discussed internally.

“Everybody sees that we need to find more performance, and everybody's working hard to do that. We'll have whatever discussions [needed] behind closed doors,” he added.

“Max was frustrated. Which you can understand, he has a very direct line of communication with his engineer. That's something that they'll discuss between the two of them.”

One topic of discussion was the fact Verstappen was sim racing up until 3am.

The Dutchman was in action for Team Redline in an online 24 hours race at Spa-Francorchamps.

It’s not the first time Verstappen has been in action - virtually - during a race weekend.

When asked about Verstappen’s late night, Horner said: “Look he knows exactly what’s required in a grand prix, we trust his judgement.”