Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has stuck by his claim that Red Bull never made an approach to Fernando Alonso over a 2019 seat, but instead revealed that he was approached by Alonso's manager and F1 owners Liberty Media.
Alonso claims he was approached twice about joining Red Bull for the 2019 season and rejected both offers – instead choosing to hang up his F1 helmet to focus on the World Endurance Championship and potentially a full season of IndyCar.
Horner stated that wasn't true as it doesn't fit their philosophy of promoting from within the Red Bull junior programme.
"Just to be clear there was no offer made to Fernando Alonso for F1 next year," Horner said. "We had an enquiry from Flavio [Briatore, Alonso's manager] and Liberty Media, but the position within Red Bull has always been pretty clear that we invest in youth and obviously have a talent pool through our junior programme.
"That has been the case with [Sebastian] Vettel, [Daniil] Kvyat, [Daniel] Ricciardo and [Max] Verstappen. We are always going to draw from the talent pool we have.
"We have offered a contract [to Alonso] in the past but that was back in 2007."
When asked about the Liberty approach, Horner added: "There was just an enquiry as to whether we would consider Fernando. I can understand from a promoter point of view…Fernando is a great asset for F1 if he’s in a competitive car.
"I’m sure they’d prefer him to be staying than pursue a Triple Crown. I wouldn’t expect them to do anything different."
