{"id":36842,"date":"2025-04-20T23:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T23:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/36842\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T23:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T23:28:10","slug":"christian-horner-produces-onboard-evidence-to-dispute-max-verstappens-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/36842\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Horner produces onboard evidence to dispute Max Verstappen’s penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has said the team is unlikely to protest the penalty decision that cost Max Verstappen<\/a> his victory at the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

The reigning, four-time world champion started on pole, but finished runner-up to McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri after receiving a five-second penalty for a lap one incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Piastri attacked down the inside of Turn 1 and Verstappen subsequently went off at the next part of the chicane to safeguard his lead.<\/p>\n

Verstappen and Red Bull opted against handing the position to Piastri because they felt the Australian forced him off – but stewards deemed otherwise and the world champion served his penalty in the pitlane, subsequently dropping behind his fellow front-row starter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It effectively decided the grand prix, leaving Verstappen and the team furious. Horner revealed it was unlikely that Red Bull would request a right of review, though the squad may still present the stewards with potentially new evidence.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we spoke to the stewards after the race,\u201d Horner said. \u201cThey think it was a slam dunk. So the problem is, if we’re to protest it, then they’re going to most likely hold their line.<\/p>\n

“We’ll ask them to have a look at the onboard footage that wasn’t available at the time. We’ll put this in front of them first, but I think it’s highly unlikely.”<\/p>\n

\"Christian <\/p>\n

Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bagnall \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

Horner said that while producing screenshots of Verstappen’s onboard camera to demonstrate his driver was ahead at the Turn 1 apex.<\/p>\n

“I thought it was very harsh,” he added. “We didn’t concede the position because we didn’t believe that he’d done anything wrong.<\/p>\n

“You can quite clearly see at the apex of the corner that Max is clearly ahead. The rules of engagement were discussed previously, and it was a very harsh decision.<\/p>\n

“If we’d have given it up, the problem is you then obviously run in the dirty air as well and you are then at risk with George [Russell], so the best thing to do was at that point we got the penalty, get your head down, keep going.<\/p>\n

“We were in good shape. We had to serve the five-second penalty, and thereafter, on the same basic stint as Oscar he finished 2.6 seconds behind, so without that five-second penalty today it would have been a win.<\/p>\n

“But there’s always going to be a difference of opinion over a very marginal decision like that.”<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Gabriel Bouys – AFP – Getty Images<\/p>\n

Horner said the fact that the stewards handed out a five-second penalty instead of the usual 10-second suggested that they were also in two minds about the incident at the time.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I think they were,” he said. “When you look at that [points to screenshot], I can’t see how they got to that conclusion.<\/p>\n

“Max can’t just disappear at this point in time, so perhaps these rules need a re-look at. I don’t know what happened to let them race on the first lap. That just seemed to have been abandoned.”<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Filip Cleeren\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen\n<\/p>\n

Red Bull Racing\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull boss Christian Horner has said the team is unlikely to protest the penalty decision that cost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,707,4884,16025,1073,12,1144,749,16024,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-36842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-jeddah-street-circuit","13":"tag-max-verstappen","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-red-bull-racing","17":"tag-saudi-arabian-gp","18":"tag-scotland","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114372890229726174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}