Christian Horner gives blunt excuse for Max Verstappen penalty as title bid takes huge hit

offered just eight words to Sky Sports F1 reporter when asked about 's pit lane crash during the sprint race. The four-time world champion came in to change his intermediate tyres for slicks during Saturday's wet-to-dry sprint race thriller, but was released into the path of Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli. The two cars made contact, and Verstappen's right-side front wing endplate was shattered.

After a brief investigation, the Dutchman was slapped with a 10-second time penalty for an unsafe release. This was a sucker-punch blow for Verstappen, who did nothing wrong during the incident. With Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri crossing the line first and second, his chances of scoring a fifth successive F1 crown have been significantly dented.

On his way from the pit wall to the Red Bull garage, Horner was intercepted by Kravitz, who asked him how the incident occurred. "Yeah, look... human error," he said. "We'll learn from it."

This explanation will do little to comfort Verstappen, who is now 19 points behind championship leader Piastri heading into the Grand Prix on Sunday. With McLaren the favourites to take pole position, the Red Bull driver could find himself over a race victory behind the Australian by the end of the weekend.

In his post-race chat with Sky Sports F1, Verstappen was asked whether his unsafe release was linked to Red Bull's recent pit-stop issues. Horner's squad had a problem with their automated pit-exit lights in Bahrain two races ago, which cost both drivers considerable time.

"They have all been different incidents," he explained. "You can't compare these things. We all don't want that to happen, but it happened. It's something we need to investigate, but I'm just happy no one got injured. With these cars, if you hit someone, it's not great. It's super clear what happened, so there's not much more for me to add."

Verstappen's misery was of little consolation to Antonelli, who started from pole position but suffered a baptism of fire in the chaotic conditions. He was shuffled from first to fourth on the opening lap and finished outside of the points. "For sure, it was a shame, because obviously it was a great opportunity," he said.

"A bit annoyed about lap one, with how it went. It seems like it's like this, that you can do basically whatever you want. So it's good to know for the future. Definitely it's a shame, but luckily we have a qualifying to bounce back."