Albers critical of Horner: 'He should apply that to himself'

In Japan, there was little of it for the outside world to see. No intrigues surfaced at Red Bull Racing, no mutual suspicions surfaced. After weeks of internal turmoil - with Christian Horner at its centre - calm seemed to have returned at the Austrian team. But appearances can be deceptive, Christijan Albers has learned through his own network.

"That power struggle is not over yet," the former F1 driver states in a Telegraaf podcast. As an example, Albers mentions the conversation Horner had with Fernando Alonso. "Christian Horner had a normal conversation with Alonso. But that shows, if Dr Marko is not involved in that, what is going on there in that team. I have to tell you honestly, I think it's pretty fairly quiet at the moment. Maybe it's silence before the storm. They are all trying to keep it fairly quiet. But it's all about one person. Every time you come back to one person. And that, of course, is Christian Horner."

'Horner does not express full confidence in Verstappen'

Albers says he does not understand how Horner manages to maintain the turmoil himself. "If I had been Christian Horner, I would have said: 'Listen, it doesn't matter what anyone says, me and the team are going to do everything we can to please Max Verstappen and Checo Perez, because we want to keep these drivers'. It's as simple as that. It's such an easy statement, then you're just done with everything. But he doesn't clearly say that either."

Yet - somewhat cynically perhaps - there is also praise from Albers for Horner. For instance, in the former driver's view, the team boss rightly states that no one is bigger than the team. "So Max is not bigger than the team, nobody is. But then he has to include himself in that," Albers believes.