Christian Horner today paid tribute to Lewis Hamilton and refused to rule out a possible move for the Englishman to Horner’s Red Bull concern.
Although any transfer in the near future remains highly unlikely, Horner’s comments add further heat to the bubbling cauldron of speculation about Hamilton’s long-term plans.
“If he wanted to drive for Red Bull then of course you couldn’t ignore a driver of his calibre,” Horner stated. “But I understand that he’s got a multi-year contract with McLaren and I’d envisage that he’d be there for a while yet.
“With any driver/team relationship there’s got to be a desire on both sides, and that’s what makes the relationship work so well with our current drivers. Sebastian’s been with Red Bull since he was 12.
“But who knows, in the future, you can never rule anything out. But there would have to be a strong desire on both sides to do something like that.”
The Red Bull team principal, whose outfit Hamilton recently derided as merely a “drinks company”, went on to qualify and amend his remarks.
“It’s difficult to see how you could have two drivers of Lewis and Sebastian’s calibre under one roof.
“There tends to be fireworks, as we saw with Fernando Alonso and Lewis. So we’re very happy with the line-up that we have and we’ll see how things evolve.”
