Red Bull balls against Pirelli a source of pride – Horner

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has told Autosport.com he’s proud the team “had the balls” to stand by the criticisms it leveled against the performance of Pirelli’s 2013 Formula One tyres. The negative feedback from Red Bull Racing and company chief Dietrich Mateschitz regarding the tyres’ rapid degradation earlier in the season was dismissed by some competitors as complaints prompted by the team’s own struggles with the tyres – but Horner thinks other teams felt as Red Bull did, only they chose to be less forthright.

“We were just being honest; we weren’t hiding behind the issue and being politically correct,” Horner told Autosport. “We were just being honest about the situation, that we thought it was too marginal. We were saying what a lot of people were telling us in private but perhaps didn’t have the balls to say in public. I think our position has been totally persistent and thankfully something has been done. Whether that disadvantages or helps us, I have got no idea.”

The team principal stressed to Autosport that Red Bull’s stance was not motivated by its own competitiveness, but rather by doing what is right for Formula One once he saw that the tyres “were becoming a very dominant factor.”