Red Bull 'vetoed Drive to Survive footage of Horner'

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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has revealed that the team had used its 'get out of jail' card to veto some embarrassing footage and comments made in the heat of the moment.

Although Horner has been generally supportive of Netflix behind the scenes documentary series Drive to Survive, there have been some moments over the last five seasons where he's felt forced to put his foot down.

"My wife has always said to me a pat on the back is only six inches from a kick up the arse," Horner memorably said earlier this year. "This is like the Kardashians on wheels."

Read also: Verstappen heals rift with Netflix over Drive to Survive

More recently, Horner revealed fears that some of the hours of footage gathered by the film makers over the course of the season could have proven commercially damaging to the team.

“What you’ve got to remember is that it’s a television show,” Horner told the Financial Times newspaper in an exclusive interview this week. “They capture hours and hours of content.

“The problem is they put a microphone on you at the beginning of the day and you forget that they’re there," he explained. "Then you get to the end of the season and they tend to send you the clips of just you and your team.

“You think ‘Did I really say that? Did I really call someone a See You Next Tuesday’?

"At that point we say, ‘You can’t put that in there, there’s a part of the car you can’t show'," he admitted. "That’s the only get out of jail card we have.”

Max Verstappen withdrew his agreement to participate in the series in during the 2022 season after accusing the show of faking storylines and being 'over the top' in how it depicted clashes between drivers

However he subsequently relented, and has agreed to a limited interview for the new run of episodes for 2023.

Red Bull also had a falling out with a different media outlet when it withdrew co-operation with Sky Sports F1 during last year's Mexican GP over comments made by pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.