Christian Horner has revealed that Jacques Villeneuve’s comments at the Canadian Grand Prix helped to briefly resurrect Daniel Ricciardo’s form amid a debate between himself and Helmut Marko over the Australian’s immediate future.

The 53-year-old, who was on punditry duty for Sky Sports F1 that weekend, said: “Why is he still in F1? We’re hearing the same thing now for the last four, five years — we have to make it better for him, poor him. It’s been five years of that.”

Ricciardo hit back at the time, saying Villeneuve was “chatting s***”, and Horner has now opened up on how those comments hurt the now-axed driver.

He started the season roughly,” the Red Bull boss told the F1 Nation podcast. “Miami was a weekend of two halves, the Friday and Saturday morning was fantastic, and it looked like the Daniel of old defending against Ferraris and out-driving the car. But then the Saturday afternoon and Sunday were disastrous.

“Even around Barcelona, Helmut wanted him out of the car, and there was already a lot of pressure on him there. But by the time we got to Montreal, it was actually dear old Jacques Villeneuve got him properly wound up, giving him a hard time.

“And it definitely fired him up because the way he drove the car that weekend, he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and put together a very strong race weekend. So I said give Jacques a call every Grand Prix for the rest of the year, because whatever he said, it definitely worked.”



By Archie Griggs,Sam Smith

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