Helmut Marko has claimed that Max Verstappen would’ve won this season’s Formula 1 title had Christian Horner been sacked as Red Bull boss sooner.
Marko has well and truly taken the gloves off since his own departure from the Milton Keynes-based squad, with his retirement announced last week.
The Austrian and the team ended their longstanding relationship upon the conclusion of this year’s championship, in which Verstappen was close to an extraordinary comeback.
Verstappen had been over 100 points adrift in the final third of the season, but narrowly lost the title by just two points, after winning six races in that time.
Marko has already made some bombshell claims regarding Horner, accusing the 51-year-old of “dirty games” and trying to get him ousted amid the organisation’s background restructuring.
And the 82-year-old has now made a further explosive assertion, saying that Horner’s removal from the team at an earlier date would have helped Verstappen complete the turnaround.
When asked by De Limburger if Horner’s exit felt like somewhat of a personal win, Marko replied: “No”, intimating that it was a necessary choice.
“We had to do something because performance on the track was lagging behind,” he added.
“Had we done that earlier, we would have got things up and running faster this year, and Max would have become World Champion. I am absolutely convinced of that.”
Just a matter of weeks ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Verstappen was asked whether Horner’s departure was connected to the upwards trajectory Red Bull had enjoyed in the latter part of the season, to which he replied that he found it “a really weird question”.
“I don’t know why that would be suddenly now – that we closed 49 points like that? I don’t know. You can fill it in yourself,” he added.
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