Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has defended Sebastian Vettel, saying the German has every right to feel frustrated at his start to the season.
The current and four-time champion sits sixth in the standings, ten points behind fourth-placed Daniel Ricciardo who’s enjoyed better luck than his team-mate.
Vettel has suffered from repeated reliability issues which have hampered his races, with retirement from the Monaco Grand Prix his latest result which resulted in some frustrated messages over the team radio.
That’s to be expected according to Horner who says, despite the frustration, the German will continue to work hard and will eventually overcome the problems.
“He’s doing nothing wrong and is smart enough to recognise that, so like any sportsman he is going to be frustrated when things go wrong,” said Horner.
“With time to take a breath and reflect, he will keep working away at it. It is the nature of who he is that he will never give up, keep his head down and keep working harder and harder.”
One thing Vettel isn’t having to endure is a difficult relationship with team-mate Ricciardo, unlike previous seasons when he partnered Mark Webber.
Horner for one is glad the attention isn’t on his duo, but rather that of the dominant Mercedes outfit where Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg fell out over the weekend – but later made up during a private chat.
After years of dealing with a toxic relationship at Red Bull between Vettel and ex-team-mate Mark Webber, Horner said it is refreshing that the focus is now on the Mercedes drivers this year.
“It’s part of sport, I’m just relieved it’s not us for a change,” he added. “Every team will deal with their issues how they see the best fit and I assume that Mercedes will deal with it the way they want it dealt with. It’s the nature of sport, that when you’ve got competitive sportsmen competing against each other the word ‘team-mate’ is a bit of a fallacy.”
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