Red Bull boss Christian Horner says the recent decision to drop Juri Vips proves they take a “zero tolerance” approach to racism.
The issue has been back in focus ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, following resurfaced comments made by three-time Formula 1 champion Nelson Piquet last year that included a racial slur towards Lewis Hamilton.
A day earlier, F2 driver Vips had been dropped from Red Bull’s stable after using the same racial slur on a live Twitch stream while playing Call of Duty online.
And when asked why the team hadn’t directly condemned the Piquet comments, Horner believed their actions spoke louder words.
“First of all, we’re appalled by Nelson’s comments. It’s from an interview from quite a long time ago,” he told Sky Sports.
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“We obviously had an incident with one of our young drivers at the end of last week and we took very definitive action where he’d made a racist comment and so we took action and we removed him from the team.
“So we put out a statement about Juri and then this one came out and we felt that we’d made a very strong statement through the action of actually dropping Juri from the team for not condoning any form of racism or discrimination.
“We’ve put out another statement earlier in the day about Juri, about having zero tolerance for racism,” Horner added.
“Of course, we’re behind Lewis, we’re fully signed up to the Hamilton commission.
“Actions sometimes talk louder than words and the action we took with Juri, was obviously draconian, but in line with the policy that we have.”
The Piquet story does hit close to Red Bull though with Nelson’s daughter Kelly currently dating Max Verstappen.
Ahead of the Silverstone weekend, the Dutchman said the Brazilian’s words were “not correct” though was clear he believed Piquet was not racist.
That, and perhaps lingering unhappiness over last year, saw the reigning world champion booed by fans as he came onto the grid during Sky’s F1 Show.
“Max is absolutely clear that he’s fully supportive of Lewis and, not just Lewis, but just to any form of racism or discrimination in the sport,” Horner said.
“As Red Bull, we’re a young team, we’re a very inclusive team. We have a very young following, a very diverse following, and that’s very, very important to us.
“Lewis is going to have huge support here. You know, next weekend, there’s going to be another home race for us in Austria.
“I’m sure the team is going to have huge support with another 30,000 Dutch fans there. So you know, that’s sport, isn’t it? That’s competition.”
Catch!! ? Getting up close with the fans on #BritishGP Thursday ? pic.twitter.com/qDFAWeBF1Y
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) June 30, 2022
That being said, the Briton felt the response was out of character for the Silverstone crowd.
“It’s never nice to hear boos for any driver,” he stated.
“It’s unusual for the British Grand Prix crowd to do that because they usually appreciate all drivers. But do you know what? It’s something that he accepts.
“Lewis is their favourite driver here and I’ve got no issue with that. Next weekend I know they’ll be a lot of support. He has massive support all over the world. It’s just one of those things.”
