Christian Horner defended Daniil Kvyat when asked about the warning fired off last week by Red Bull motorsport chief Helmut Marko towards the 21-year-old Russian driver.
Marko was comparing the performance of the senior members of the Red Bull squad with the outstanding debut of juniors Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz, alluding to Kvyat perhaps in danger of losing his seat at the end of the season to one of the two Toro Rosso young guns.
"Daniil has had a tough run so far," acknowledged the newly-wed Horner. "Things haven’t gone cleanly on his side of the garage, he’s had some good races and he’s had some times that he’s struggled with. But he’s young, he’s developing all the time. We can see a great deal of potential in him, you can see it even in that last wet run at the end of P2 today. He’s going to mature and develop."
Horner also pointed to Marko's typical outspokenness and habit of putting a driver under pressure when he felt necessary, as was indeed the case with Mark Webber in the past.
"Helmut has always called things as they are. I recall going back to Mark Webber’s time... After this race in 2010 we went to Turkey. As we know, Mark and Helmut didn’t always see eye to eye and they (Mark and Sebastian) had that crash in Turkey. We ended up back in my office and it was an opportunity, I said to Mark, to get everything out, address your issues with Helmut. And I said to Helmut before the meeting, whatever he says, take it on the chin and agree. And so Mark went through all the issues that he had, told him what had pissed him off about Helmut, blah, blah blah, and Helmut took it on board and said ‘yes, OK, I agree, OK’ and then he said ‘anyway, the next race in Valencia is very important to us and you’ve always been shit in Valencia!’ And Mark, thankfully, saw the funny side but it explains some of the straight talking that Helmut tends to have.
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