Christian Horner says he is ‘appalled’ at Nelson Piquet’s racist comments towards Lewis Hamilton

Christian Horner has defended Red Bull’s reaction to the racist slurs used by Nelson Piquet against Lewis Hamilton. 

Piquet, a three-time Formula One world champion, has been banned from the paddock indefinitely after discriminatory comments he made about the Mercedes driver in an interview last year resurfaced. 

There has been widespread condemnation of the Brazilian, with Hamilton describing Piquet’s mindset as ‘archaic’, but Red Bull are one of the few teams who have not issued a statement in support of the Brit. 

Piquet has been banned from the F1 paddock indefinitely after his discriminatory comments

Meanwhile, the team’s star driver Max Verstappen – who is the partner of Piquet’s daughter Kelly – said that the 69-year-old is ‘definitely not a racist’ and suggested the comments had been ‘blown out of proportion’. 

It comes at the same time as Red Bull’s own racism scandal, as they terminated the contract of reserve driver Juri Vips on Tuesday after he used offensive language in an online gaming stream.

Horner believes that the decision to drop Vips made clear the team’s anti-racism stance amid the uproar surrounding Piquet. 

‘First of all, of course, we were appalled at Nelson’s comments,’ the Red Bull boss told Sky Sports. ‘It is from an interview from some time ago and obviously we had had an incident with one of our young drivers at the end of last week.

Red Bull are one of the few teams who have not issued a statement in support of Hamilton

The team terminated the contract of reserve driver Juri Vips after his use of racist language

‘We took very definitive action when he had made a racist comment and we immediately removed him from the team.

‘So we had put out a statement about Juri, then this comes out and we felt we had made a very strong statement through the action of actually dropping Juri from the team and not in any way condoning any form of racism or discrimination.

‘Of course, we are fully behind Lewis, fully signed up to the Hamilton Commission and sometimes actions speak louder than words. The action we took with Juri was draconian but in line with the policy we have.’