Horner reacts to Abiteboul: "We are real partners with Honda"

Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner and Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul still don't get along very well. In Italy, a disagreement arose again after Abiteboul commented during the press conference on Friday.

Abiteboul said he thinks Red Bull have missed the mark in modern Formula 1. The French team boss thinks that the organisation of the chassis and the organisation of the engine are too independent from each other. Red Bull drove Renault engines in Formula 1 until 2018 and Honda since 2019. Abiteboul says they haven't performed better since the switch.

Response Horner

"What he says is that we can't win until we build our own engine, because otherwise, they won't be fully integrated [into the chassis]", says Horner in an interview according to Motorsport.com. "We're really partners and we're working more closely together than we ever did with Renault in the V6 era."

"We've been world champions four times and have won around 60 races while using Renault engines. But count on the relationship with Honda to be a real partnership rather than a customer-supplier relationship", Horner explains.

Honda has a factory in Japan and Red Bull has a factory in Milton Keynes, but according to Horner, it doesn't matter about the partnership. "It's no different than having a factory in Paris and Enstone. Honda also has a factory in Milton Keynes, just around the corner. That's where the entire racing team is located. So they're much closer to us with their engine facilities than Renault is to theirs."