Barcelona: Fernando Alonso wants Red Bull to apologise after they denied his claim they offered him a drive for 2019. The 37-year-old said Red Bull approached him about the seat being vacated by Daniel Ricciardo, who is joining Renault.
But two-time world champion Alonso has since said he would be leaving Formula 1 at the end of the season, with Pierre Gasly moving to Red Bull instead.
“It was not the case for me to join this adventure,” said Alonso.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said the team “offered Fernando a contract in the past but that was back in 2007”.
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Earlier this week, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko said Alonso “doesn’t fit with us” and told Red Bull’s Servus TV station: “We were negotiating with him in 2007 or 2008. His demands were very tedious back then.
“If you look at his history, in McLaren and Ferrari, it was always a one-man show.”
However, Alonso later claimed he had offers from Red Bull six times in his career.
“I had a couple of offers from Red Bull,” Alonso told Sky F1. “In fact I had one in 2007, in 2009, in 2011, 2013, and two this year, one in Monaco, and one in August.
“The comments of Christian Horner this summer and Mr Marko are completely out of context, surprise comments about me creating chaos and being a difficult man to work with.
“One, they never worked with me, and secondly they’ve been chasing me for five or six occasions in the last seven years, and now they say that, that they are loyal to their programme and their commitments and their junior drivers.
“It has been weird, it has been unfair to me. I wrote to Christian after his comments this summer, he apologised by email, and hopefully he’ll apologise again this weekend.”
But Horner, speaking on Friday, again insisted no offer had been made to the Spaniard for 2019.
“To be totally clear, there was no offer to Fernando Alonso for next year,” said Horner.
“He is a fantastic driver and a great talent, he has chosen his path. We had an inquiry from Flavio Briatore and from Liberty Media but the position within Red Bull has always been very clear.
“We invest in youth and have a talent pool through the Red Bull junior programme and as has been the case with Sebastian Vettel, (Daniil) Kvyat, (Daniel) Ricciardo and Max Verstappen, we were always going to draw on the talent we have.”
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