Christian Horner has hit back at Adrian Newey’s claim that a lack of experience led Red Bull down the wrong path with their car.

Newey was Red Bull’s chief technician for nearly 20 years, but he will leave ahead of the new season to join Aston Martin.

The veteran grew concerned over the performance of the car, even when Max Verstappen drove to 19 race wins in 22 Grands Prix in 2023.

"It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many of the people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about," Newey told Auto Motor und Sport.

"From what I can see from the outside – but I don’t know – the guys at Red Bull, this is no criticism but I think they just perhaps through lack of experience kept going in that same direction, and the problem became more and more acute to the point that even Max found it difficult to drive."

Horner has now countered Newey’s claim, telling Racing News 365: "I haven't seen those comments.

"But the issues are more deep-rooted than last year, I think when you dig into the data and some of the characteristics, you start to see them much earlier, and definitely during 2023.

"It was a matter of unravelling it to understand what were the contributing factors to having peaky performance and that it is where the team has worked very hard to understand and address it."