Christian Horner doesn't believe Red Bull needed to issue a public response to the revelations of racist slurs from Nelson Piquet directed towards Lewis Hamilton.
Many Formula 1 teams were quick to voice their support for the Briton on social media, after footage emerged of Piquet using a slang version of the n-word to describe him in a video from last year. Red Bull, though, was one of the teams which stayed quiet on the situation.
According to team principal Horner, Red Bull had already made their position on racism clear with the sacking of development driver Juri Vips. The F2 racer used the n-word while participating in a gaming live stream, and soon found himself axed from the young drivers' programme.
He told Sky Sports F1 that he felt that action spoke louder than any words the team could have used. "Well, first of all, of course, we are appalled by Nelson's comments and it is from an interview that was from some time ago," Horner said.
"But we had obviously had an instance with one of our young drivers at the end of last week and we took very definitive action where he had made a racist comment and so we took action and we immediately removed him from the team.
"So, we put out a statement about Juri and then this one comes out and we felt that we had made a very strong statement through action of actually dropping Juri from the team by not in any way condoning any form of racism or discrimination.
"To then put out another statement about Nelson Piquet – of course, we are fully behind Lewis, we are fully signed up to the Hamilton Commission and we felt that actions sometimes talk louder than words. The action that we took with Juri was draconian but in line with the policy that we have."
Horner was also forced to jump to the defence of Max Verstappen, who gave mixed messages when asked about the subject in two separate interviews on Thursday. At first he claimed he and all other F1 drivers "are all supporting" Hamilton, but later he defended Piquet as a "nice guy" and insisted his girlfriend's father is "not a racist".
"Max is absolutely clear that he is fully supportive of Lewis and not just Lewis, but just to any form of racism or discrimination in the sport," said the Red Bull chief. "And as Red Bull, we are a young team, a very inclusive team, we have a very young following, a very diverse following and that is very important to us."
