Red Bull Will Resume Broadcasting Relationship With Sky Sports After Mexico Boycott

After boycotting Sky Sports at the Mexican Grand Prix, Red Bull have confirmed that things will go back to normal going forward. ...
Credit: Mark Thompson

Some people may have noticed that during the Mexican Grand Prix, Red Bull didn’t speak to Sky Sports once during the whole weekend. This was strange for two reasons, one Red Bull won the race, and two, team boss, Christian Horner, often speaks candidly to Sky Sports to offer analysis and insight both during and after the race. The reason for the boycott was due to Red Bull’s protest against comments made by pundit, Ted Kravitz, who suggest that Lewis Hamilton was “robbed” of the title last year. Christian Horner has confirmed that the boycott was only for the weekend of the Mexican Grand Prix and things will proceed as normal in Brazil.

Horner has said that he hopes a message has been sent:

“There were some derogatory comments made so we took a break from Sky for this race. Max was upset. We were upset and we made the decision to stand together as a team. It won’t have done Sky any harm for us to lay down a marker. Some of the commentary is fair but some pieces are sensationalist, and saying we robbed anyone of the championship, as was said in Austin, is going too far.

“It is not impartial or fair or balanced. We have said our piece and will go back to normal next race.”

Ted Kravitz

Ted Kravtiz said a few things that Red Bull really didn’t like including the segment that started it all on his show Ted’s Notebook:

“Seven-time world champion [Lewis Hamilton] goes into the final race trying to be the greatest of all time, and win [the] championship. He gets robbed, comes back, his next year’s car is rubbish. He doesn’t win a race all year, and then finally comes back at a track where he could win the first race all year, battling with the same guy who won the race he was robbed in the previous year, and manages to finish ahead of him.

“What a script and a story that would have been. But that’s not the way the script turned out today, was it? Because the guy that beat him after being robbed actually overtook him, because he’s got a quicker car, because of engineering and Formula One and design, and pretty much because of [Adrian Newey Red Bull’s chief technical officer] over there.”

Kravitz said “robbed” three times, and if that wasn’t enough, he made further sly comments: “Verstappen is around the [Austin] paddock, he seems very happy with himself. He doesn’t seem to be a driver capable of winning a championship in a normal way.”

Verstappen for his part was short and sweet on the topic: “It has been a constant kind of digging and being disrespectful, especially from one particular person. At one point it is enough, and I don’t accept it. You cannot live in the past and you have to move on.”

The story has gotten traction on Twitter (as these things do) with the hashtag #ThankYouTedKravitz. It is essentially a lot of Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton fans arguing that Kravitz had said what was only the “truth” with particular reference to an iNews opinion piece by Kevin Garside.

Garside argued that “If Max Verstappen really felt there were nothing in Ted Kravitz’s claim he would laugh it off but it’s clear he is still troubled greatly by events in Abu Dhabi.”

Though it should be stated that Garside also compared the Red Bull boycott with Putin’s Russia as sharing “a pernicious characteristic” so we can probably infer that this piece is just another piece of sensationalistic journalism, kind of proving Red Bull’s point.

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