Red Bull team principal Christian Horner fired a shot at Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz, something which was labelled as “unfair” by the broadcaster’s presenter.
Horner and Kravitz have an odd relationship, which turned sour 12 months ago after Red Bull boycotted all Sky Sports interviews at the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix.
This was because Kravitz said that Lewis Hamilton was “robbed” of the 2021 crown by Max Verstappen, something he said at the 2022 United States Grand Prix.
It wasn’t the first time Kravitz had mentioned the controversial 2021 finale, with Red Bull having felt that the broadcaster wasn’t being impartial, resulting in the one-race boycott.
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Whilst Kravitz has gone onto interview both Horner and Verstappen several times since his comments, digs continue to be made.
The latest came on Saturday at the Circuit of the Americas, after Kravitz reported that Verstappen was experiencing an electrical issue during the sprint shootout.
When asked about this following the session, Horner fired his latest shot at the veteran reporter.
“Ted’s always talking… usually not out of his mouth,’ Horner replied, when asked if Verstappen was nursing an issue.
Presenter Simon Lazenby responded by calling Horner’s comment “unfair”, before the team principal added: “There’s always things electrically you can tidy up.
“There’s some driverability stuff that Max wants us to tune before the race. [There are no issues] from a reliability point of view.”
Whether he had an issue or not, Verstappen still went onto claim pole position for the sprint race, which he won with absolute ease.
Following his P1 in the sprint shootout though, the Dutchman admitted that his best lap “wasn’t particularly great” but that the RB19 still felt strong.
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“We were quite competitive. The last lap wasn’t particularly great but still on pole, so that means the car is working quite well. It’s going to be an exciting afternoon,” said Verstappen after claiming sprint pole, as reported by the Daily Mail.
“You can see a lot of different cars being very close to each other, so you don’t know what’s going to happen in the Sprint Race. It’s all going to be a bit of a question mark [with what to expect in the sprint]. Overall, normally in the race, we are quite OK. Nevertheless, this track is always quite demanding.
“Tyre management is always quite key around here. The wear is quite high because of all the high-speed corners, then you have to deal with the low-speed where you need traction. It’s going to be tough.”