Horner: We want to win the title the right way! Can Verstappen achieve the coveted championship?

Will Max Verstappen win the championship? If he does, Christian Horner says it must be in the right way and through clean racing. What did the Red Bull boss say on the F1 Nation podcast?

The title fight is escalating, the tension is rising and the emotions are at a level that could be cut. Especially after the recent Saudi Grand Prix, which brought a lot of controversy and intense battles.

Verstappen has shown throughout the season that he is capable of racing on the edge, perhaps even slightly outside the rules at times, in his duel with Lewis Hamilton. While the situation between Mercedes and Red Bull continues to escalate, Horner is adamant that he must win the title the right way.

“You want to win on the track, not by stewards’ decisions or by pushing your rivals into the gravel zone. You just have to win the race cleanly,” Horner says on the F1 Nation podcast.

“It’s been a tough battle all season. There have been some interesting and beautiful battles between the two drivers and I hope it will be a fair and clean race in Abu Dhabi,” he added.

He also noted that if someone had told him at the start of the year that Verstappen and Hamilton would be fighting for the title in the last race in Abu Dhabi, he said that the entire Red Bull team would have bitten off the hand of the man in question.

It must be said, this season is really very attractive and will undoubtedly be one of the most memorable in the history of Formula 1. Verstappen and Hamilton’s cordial duel is in many ways similar to the battles of yesteryear between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost or Michael Schumacher and Mikko Häkkinen.

It should also be noted that both Red Bull and Mercedes already have considerable experience of grand final duels.

However, it must be remembered that while Mercedes drivers have fought for the title at most between themselves (2014, 2016), Red Bull faced a lot of competition in 2010. Before the last race of the season, four drivers had a chance to win – Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber (both Red Bull), Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) and Hamilton (McLaren).

Even in 2012, when Vettel celebrated his third championship title in a row, he was battling with a driver from a different stable, namely the Spaniard Alonso again.

“There will be a morale boost for the last race from our side. What happened in Saudi Arabia was crazy, but we came out of the race with second place and managed to take the lead, ” Horner concluded.

Yes, Verstappen took the lead during the Saudi Grand Prix and he was able to hold on to his lead. However, the chaos that reigned at the Jeddah circuit meant that he lost the top spot and Hamilton was the first to see the chequered flag. That, if the Dutch driver wants to win the world title, simply cannot happen again.

Sources: Motorsport, F1