Red Bull boss Christian Horner ‘appalled’ by Nelson Piquet’s remarks on Lewis Hamilton

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has claimed that the team are appalled by the comments made by Nelson Piquet about Lewis Hamilton.

Piquet’s comments from a Portuguese podcast resurfaced recently where he made remarks which were racist in nature towards the seven-time World Champion. His comments were widely condemned by the racing world, with Hamilton asking for a change in the archaic mindsets surrounding the sport.

The seven-time World Champion received support from his peers and rival teams.

Horner has now made comments on the whole situation connected to the Mercedes driver. This comes days after Red Bull suspended junior driver Juri Vips for making a racist comment.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, the Red Bull boss said that the whole team was appalled by Piquet’s comments. He also pointed out how they took definitive action against Vips.

“First of all we are appalled at Nelson’s comments, this is from an interview from some time ago, but we obviously had an incidence with one of our young drivers at the end of last week. And we took very definitive action where he made a racist comment so we took action and immediately removed him from the team.”

“So we had put out a statement about Juri and then this one comes out and we felt we’d made a very strong statement through action of actually dripping Juri from the team, from not in any way condoning any form of racism and discrimination,” said Horner.

Horner also said that the team are fully behind Hamilton in the situation and said that sometimes actions talk louder than words.

“Of course, we are fully behind Lewis, we are fully signed up to the Hamilton Commission and we felt actions sometimes talk louder than words. And the action we took with Juri, which obviously was draconian but in line with the policy we have,” said Horner.