Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has refused to count out Lewis Hamilton this season. The Brit has endured a nightmare start to the ongoing F1 campaign, twice finishing tenth or below, with just the one podium so far.
The seven-time champion is a lowly seventh in the drivers standings and during the Imola GP on Sunday, he was lapped by Max Verstappen for the first time in five years. Despite his struggles for pace and overcoming the porpoising issue, Horner believes the sporting legend will still have a significant role to play as the season progresses.
"He obviously had a horrible weekend but he is still an eight-time world champion... seven-time! I forgot Nico Rosberg won," Horner said. "He hasn't forgotten how to drive in the last four races so at some point they will sort their issues out and he will become a factor but obviously, the young guys are doing a great job."
Addressing the moment Verstappen lapped his rival, Horner added: "I think Lewis didn't have a great weekend but we are very much focused on our race and trying to extract the maximum points. It was obviously one of those things. At that point, we were looking at the clouds, was the rain going to come in the last part of the race or not, we were more focused on that."
Post-race, a deflated Hamilton commented on one of the worst race weekends of his phenomenal career and conceded any hopes of winning the championship this year. “It’s been difficult, but I don’t really know what to say,” the 37-year-old said. “It’s definitely not easy.
“I am out of the championship, and there’s no question about that. It has been a weekend to forget. Everyone is feeling it and everyone is head down, trying their best. There's no-one that's giving up and everyone is just trying to move forward as fast as they can."
On the other hand, Red Bull secured a front row finish with Verstappen taking the chequered flag in Imola, with teammate Sergio Perez coming second. This is the first time the team have managed this since 2016’s edition of the same race and 48-year-old Horner was absolutely delighted.
“It was quite a stressful race on the pit wall because of changing conditions, and there’s a lot that can go wrong in those situations, but I thought both Max and Checo did an unbelievable job today,” Horner told the F1 website . “To come here, we attacked the weekend, we brought a little upgrade – a lot of people said, ‘you shouldn’t do that with only one practice session.’
“We believed in ourselves, and it paid off. And I think we were unlucky in Australia a couple of weeks ago, but we came within one point of maximum points this weekend, so it’s a great fightback by the team. A wonderful, wonderful team performance.” Red Bull will look to build on Sunday's result at the inaugural Miami GP on May 8.
