Horner expecting 'excuses' from Renault after Verstappen engine failure

A frustrated Christian Horner admitted not to be 'surprised' by Max Verstappen's engine failure, the Red Bull driver retiring from the Hungarian Grand Prix after just seven laps.

As he was charging in the opening laps of the race behind the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers, Verstappen reported a sudden loss of power before he was ordered by the Red Bull pitwall to pull over and call it a day.

The Dutchman let go a colorful description of his feelings over the radio as his day was done and dusted.

"Can I not just keep going? " said a dejected Verstappen.

"I don't care if this f***ing engine blows up... What a f***ing joke, all the f***ing time. Honestly. Argh!"

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Speaking during the race to Sky F1, Horner reckoned his drivers' retirement was rooted in an MGU-K failure on his Renault engine.

"Sometimes words betray you," said Horner.

"It’s cruel luck for Max. It’s an engine issue. I suppose no surprise, really. We think it’s the MGU-K."

Sky F1's Martin Brundle asked Horner how it felt to repeatedly endure failures of Renault hardware for which Red Bull is paying millions.

"I’m not going to get drawn into saying too much, but we pay multi millions of pounds for these engines for a first class or state-of-the-art product and you can see that it’s quite some way below that," was Horner's predictable response.

"It’s frustrating. We’ve still got Daniel in the race. I’ll let Cyril [Abiteboul] come up with the excuses after the race!"

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