Horner clarifies 'female fan' comments after social media backlash

Christian Horner has clarified comments that "young girls" are now following F1 because of the "great looking" drivers after receiving criticism on social media.

The Red Bull team principal made the ill-judged comments while discussing the impact of Netflix series Drive to Survive with talkSPORT host Laura Woods.

He explained: "F1 is bringing in a young generation. It’s bringing in a lot of young girls because of all these great-looking young drivers."

The comments were immediately called out by Woods with Horner going on to explain that F1 "absolutely" needs more women in driving, engineering and management roles.

Despite this, Horner's initial words created a backlash on social media and he addressed this when speaking at F1 testing on Wednesday.

“I think it has obviously been utilised on Twitter quite a bit but I think that the intention of it was that we have got a great crop of young drivers, they are exciting race drivers and it is fantastic that we’ve got a young audience, both female and male, coming into the sport," explained Horner.

“Having an insight into those personalities is something that…a show like Netflix has brought out those characters so you get to know those personalities and it’s fantastic that we are seeing wherever we go in the world, tremendous interest.

“My own daughter that is 15 had very little interest in Formula 1 before a show like Netflix came along because you couldn’t relate to the characters, you couldn’t relate to the drivers and I think whether you’re female or whether male, it’s great that we’re welcoming such new audiences throughout the globe.”

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