Chris Horner wants Max Verstappen to be smart and mend his ways

Chris Horner and Red Bull are confident that Max Verstappen will not have suffered too much after the Vettel crash in China, despite several people calling for his head for being too immature with his driving.

Verstappen did accept his mistake after the incident in Shanghai, even apologising to Vettel, much to the German’s delight.

And while Max has been receiving a lot of slack from all corners, Chris Horner feels that Max hasn’t lost the magical aura about him yet.

“I’m fully confident that he’s a phenomenal talent and he’s smart enough to recognise areas that he needs to work on and I have no doubt that he will address it.

“You know, his talent is extremely obvious, his bravery and racing instinct is not in doubt.

“His judgement [in Shanghai], he was too impatient. He will have for sure learned from that. I have no doubt of that.” Horner said, as quoted by Sky Sports.

Horner has tried to strike a comparison between Vettel and Verstappen after China, bringing to the fore a few similarities between the Verstappen of today and ‘crash kid’ Vettel of the yesteryear.

“Yes, he’s made some mistakes but I remember when we had Sebastian at a similar stage of his career, it wasn’t uncommon that he also made some mistake

“He will have learned an awful lot from [Shanghai] and put that to good use in the coming races because we have a very quick car.” Horner said.

Verstappen will have to pull his socks up and drive responsibly in Baku, or else he could see his season blow up in front of him right at the start.

He has a good enough Red Bull package, a package that won in Shanghai, so can he leverage that and finally deliver in Baku?