Christian Horner takes action with Red Bull meeting held at Belgian Grand Prix

Christian Horner reportedly arranged a sit down with Max Verstappen, Gianpiero Lambiase and Pierre Wache after a tense Hungarian GP saw the driver and his race engineer snipping at each other on the radio.

Verstappen cut a frustrated figure at the Hungaroring where the triple World Champion made it clear Red Bull’s upgrades for the RB20 were “not good enough”.

Red Bull held clear-the-air talks at Spa on Thursday evening

His mood wasn’t helped when he was asked to give P2 back to Lando Norris after their turn 1 kerfuffle, while twice being undercut soured his conversations with ‘GP’. His efforts to reach the podium were quashed by a late-race collision with Lewis Hamilton that meant he was P5 on the day.

Between f-bombs and s**t-storms, Verstappen had a lot to say and defiantly told the media, including PlanetF1.com, that he won’t change his approach even after F1 chief Stefano Domenicali told the teams to bring their drivers into line.

Telling fans at home who don’t like his language to “turn the volume down”, he added: “My opinion is that it needs to be said at the time… That’s how it goes, we are very open-minded, and we are very critical with each other as a team. And that’s been working for us very well, so I don’t expect that to change.

“That’s our approach, I think it’s important that you can be critical because, in this world that we’re living now, I feel that a lot of people can’t take criticism anymore like it used to be. And I don’t want to end up like that.”

And that, reports De Telegraaf , is what he told Horner, GP and Wache during a sit down ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

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According to the Dutch publication, Horner orchestrated a conversation between the four of them that lasted half an hour on Thursday evening.

During it, Verstappen told Red Bull that he would continue to say it like it is and that it should not be taken personally.

Adding that he knows very well how hard Red Bull are working to re-establish their dominance, Horner was said to have called it a “good conversation” that ended with everyone once again being able to look each other in the eye.

As for Verstappen and GP, the “old married couple” – as Horner has called them in the past – have worked together for eight years and will continue to do so.

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko also confirmed Verstappen and GP had cleared the air.

“The mood is a bit tense,” he told Kleine Zeitung build-up to the race weekend.

“It escalated and started with the fact that he felt he should not have given up his position after Turn One. Then one thing led to another.

“The two of them sat down together and discussed it.”

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