Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko says the Formula 1 team cannot risk its on-track fortunes being disrupted by needless spats like that between Jos Verstappen and Christian Horner.
Fresh talk of an internal political battle within Red Bull erupted at the Austrian Grand Prix when Verstappen, the father of driver Max, spoke out against Horner in the wake of a bust-up over his involvement in a Legends Parade.
Verstappen spoke to Dutch media and said he had been forced to pull out of a planned demo run in an RB8 ahead of the Austrian GP because he believed Horner was trying to block him.
He told the website of Dutch magazine Formule 1: “I am completely done with him. It looks like a kindergarten. I could have driven, but I pulled out.
“I find this so childish of Horner. It says something about him, I think.”
Horner himself later denied that there had been any veto from his side over the matter and suggested that the Verstappen Sr. situation was not of concern to him.
“You can’t control everything in life,” he said. “I can’t control relationships with drivers’ fathers, but my focus is on the performance of our drivers and performance of our team. And that’s where it will remain.”
Jos Verstappen, Dr. Helmut Marko, Consultant, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
But amid an ever-increasingly tight fight with McLaren for race victories, Marko has said such friction cannot afford to take up people’s attention.
Speaking to ServusTV, Marko said: “We’ve actually decided to concentrate on the sporting side and have enough problems there to sort that out.
“But I will say is that it [the argument] is a private matter between Jos and Christian, and [one] that shouldn’t really take place at all about such trivial matters as a show run.”
Marko said that with Red Bull’s advantage at the front of F1 having been chipped away in recent weeks, all the team’s focus had to be on what was taking place out on track.
“We must and will concentrate fully on the sport,” he said. “We have a very strong opponent in McLaren.”
He added: “The McLaren, at every track, with every temperature, with every type of tyre, is always fast straight away. So that will be a tough thing over the season.”
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