Horner compares Verstappen to Schumacher: 'He drives around the problems'
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Christian Horner sees in Max Verstappen certain qualities that seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher also showed. The Red Bull Racing team boss praises his driver for his ability to still be competitive in a car that actually is not. At the same time, Horner acknowledges that Verstappen's abilities somewhat masked the RB20's problems.
Horner compares Verstappen to Schumacher
Horner previously indicated that the first problems with Red Bull's Formula 1 car occurred as early as 2023. However, as Verstappen continued to win races, the team did not sound the alarm at that time. It was only in 2024 that the extent of the problems gradually became clearer.
"I think because of his unprecedented ability to drive around problems, Max has been able to deal with them," Horner said in the F1 Nation podcast. "It's reminiscent of how Michael Schumacher drove in the 1990s, he could also handle that car better than anyone else, while others struggled with it."
"Max has that ability to just drive around those problems. So I think it was already more or less built in, but at Monza we only really saw the extent of it. There we saw to what extent the contact between the front and rear axles was broken. And the figures we expected to see on the track were miles away from our simulations," Horner said.
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder.