Chandhok gives two reasons Red Bull have ‘made themselves unpopular’

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Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok believes Red Bull have “bizarrely made themselves more unpopular with the British fans despite winning the last two World Championships” because of the controversy surrounding the 2021 title win and the fact they do not have a British driver.

Verstappen won his first world title in controversial fashion in 2021, beating Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton by just eight points after he benefitted from a mistake by race director Michael Masi in the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi. Following an investigation into the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the FIA admitted Masi had “called the safety car back into the pit lane without it having completed an additional lap as required by the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations”.

However, they ruled that the results of the race remained “valid” and Verstappen’s world title win was upheld. That win then became even more controversial when it emerged that Red Bull had breached F1 cost cap rules that year.

And when asked if he feels Red Bull have a “popularity problem” in the UK, despite the team being based in England, Chandhok told Autosport: “It’s quite funny because we were talking about this in Abu Dhabi last year.

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“When I say us I was talking with the people at Red Bull, and how bizarrely they’d made themselves more unpopular with the British fans despite winning the last two World Championships and dominating a season. I don’t know. I think there is a variety of reasons.

“Obviously they don’t have a British driver and certainly in this country there was very much a feeling that it was them against Lewis and then you add George and Mercedes have got two Brits in that team. I think the old adage of, apart from Ferrari, the fans still gravitate more towards a driver than a team is still true.

“Yes you have McLaren fans and Mercedes fans, but they are more Lando fans or George or Lewis fans. And certainly in this country, Red Bull aren’t as popular, I think their popularity has gone down. Whether that’s a lingering effect of 2021 and Abu Dhabi I don’t know.”

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Chandhok also believes Red Bull should have admitted they “got lucky” in 2021 and that it would have gone down much better with fans. He added: “If they’d come out of Abu Dhabi 2021 and said ‘we got lucky, we were really going to lose this championship until Latifi crashed. We got lucky but it had nothing to do with us, we didn’t impose the rules, we just did our race and we ended up winning, and that’s an issue between Mercedes and the FIA to deal with and has nothing to do with us.

“‘But we acknowledge the fact that sometimes in this sport you need a slice of luck, we were unlucky in Budapest and Baku and today we got lucky. And well done Lewis, it was a great fight, sorry it didn’t work out for you’, then I think the wave of negativity towards them could have been curtailed in just the messaging and the way they came out with it, if they chose their words carefully at Abu Dhabi.”

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