Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has insisted Max Verstappen‘s frustrations were understandable after he was forced to retire from the Australian Grand Prix.

Verstappen had been bidding for a 10th consecutive Grand Prix win, but the reigning three-time world champion saw his challenge end after just four laps.

The Dutchman started from pole but was overtaken by the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in the early laps.

Shortly afterwards smoke started to come from the rear of Verstappen’s Red Bull, resulting in the Dutchman slowly making his way back to the pits to retire from a race for the first time in two years.

Verstappen appeared to have a tense exchange with a mechanic after climbing out of the smoking vehicle, with the 26-year-old appearing to mouth the word ‘stupid’.

Max Verstappen retired from the Australian Grand Prix from second with a brake issue

The three-time reigning world champion was visibly frustrated following the retirement

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he understood Verstappen’s frustrations

Horner, who has been under pressure amid his ongoing ‘sex texts’ scandal, came to Verstappen’s defence when asked about the incident on Sky Sports.

‘Obviously, a driver is going to be frustrated when he gets out of a car from a retirement,’ Horner said.

‘I think he’s been very gracious with the team and all of the mechanics, we are all one team. That DNF hurts everybody in the same way. It’s a matter of learning from it.

‘We’ve had two years with no mechanical DNFs which has been remarkable.

‘It’s a matter of understanding what caused it and learning from it and moving on.

‘It’s remarkable after three races that he’s still leading the world championship even with that DNF but, as I say, a lot of lessons to take from today.’

Verstappen also laughed off the incident, with the Dutchman questioning why three wheels on the car were being changed when it was on fire.

‘Well, that was related to us doing a pitstop while the car was on fire,’ he said.

Verstappen noticed the brake issue at the start of the race and he was overtaken by Carlos Sainz before retiring shortly after

‘I was like, “Why are we doing a pit stop?”‘

‘We just had already a very good run of two years, right? I mean, that’s already quite impressive. But of course, you never like to see it happen. But it’s more important now that we understand why it happened.’

The reigning world champion had confirmed that the rear brake had stuck on and claimed it was like ‘driving with the handbrake on’, with the heat ultimately leading to a fire.

Verstappen’s last retirement came courtesy of a fuel leak at the 2022 Australian Grand Prix.

Since then he and Red Bull have been faultless as they have dominated the last two championships.

Sainz went on to triumph at the Australian Grand Prix just 16 days after an appendix surgery

That domination carried over to the start of this season with back-to-back victories.

There were a number of other notable retirements with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell also failing to finish at Melbourne.

It was the first time that neither Hamilton or Verstappen finished a race since they collided at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.

Sainz ultimately emerged as the winner in Melbourne, with the result seeing the Spaniard close the gap to four points in the overall standings.