Horner calls out ‘sensational’ Rosberg in Max Verstappen disqualification claim

Red Bull boss Christian Horner isn’t taking Nico Rosberg’s call for Max Verstappen to be black flagged in Spain to heart, claiming the Sky F1 pundit is “quite sensational” in his commentary.

Verstappen is one point away from a race ban after a controversial collision with George Russell in the closing stages of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Christian Horner responds to Nico Rosberg’s ‘black flag’ call

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Russell lined up behind the McLaren team-mates for the restart after Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s power unit failure brought out the Safety Car.

Verstappen struggled to get going on his hard tyres and was attacked by the two drivers behind him, with Leclerc up to third while Verstappen went down the escape road to stay ahead of Russell.

He was told by Red Bull to give the position to the Mercedes driver, but while he appeared to oblige at Turn 5, a jink to the right meant he and Russell collided.

Rosberg, in commentary for Sky F1, declared it was deliberate and called for Verstappen to be black flagged.

“He needs to get black flagged,” said the 2016 World Champion. “He just crashed into Russell on purpose just to prove a point.

“That was horrible. That did not look good. That’s bad, bad, bad. That is seriously bad. He just rams him, full on.

“You need to black flag that. There’s no other way.”

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He later added: “It looked like a very intentional retaliation. Wait for the opponent, go ramming into him, just like you felt the other guy rammed into you at Turn 1.

“That’s something which is extremely unacceptable and I think the rules would [call for] a black flag, yes.

“If you wait for your opponent to bang into him, that’s a black flag.”

Horner refused to give Rosberg’s claim any merit, brushing it off as nothing more than melodramatic commentary.

“Nico’s quite sensational in the way he commentates, so we’ll leave it there,” he told media including PlanetF1.com.

Quizzed on whether Verstappen had “let himself down” through his antics, a claim made Russell, the team principal replied: “Look, I haven’t had a chance to speak to Max. It’s something we’ll talk about in time.”

“I think it’s clear that you could hear that he was frustrated,” he added.

“He didn’t agree, you can hear, with both Charles and George. I haven’t had a chance to speak to him because he’s had to speak to you guys and now he’s up in the stewards talking about the Charles incident.

“It’s something that we’ll discuss internally and look at.”

Verstappen also gave Rosberg’s claim short shrift, saying the German is entitled to his opinion.

“Yeah, that’s his opinion. He can have his opinion,” he said.

Pressed on whether he had ‘deliberately turned’ in on Russell, Verstappen denied this.

“No,” he said, simply adding: “I think it was a misjudgement.”

However, the stewards noted in their review of the incident that Verstappen was “clearly unhappy with his team’s request to give the position back” to Russell and, having “significantly reduced its speed thereby appearing to allow Car 63 to overtake”, he “suddenly accelerated and collided with Car 63”.

Aside from the 10 second penalty that dropped Verstappen from fifth to tenth in the official classification, they also imposed three penalty points to Verstappen’s Super Licence.

That moves him up to 11 for the current 12-month period, meaning just one more would trigger a one-race ban for the reigning World Champion.

Read next: George Russell slams ‘deliberate’ Verstappen crash as ‘bizarre’ move backfires