Red Bull believes its criticism of Renault in F1 was fair and honest

Horner and key colleagues such as Dietrich Mateschitz, Helmut Marko and Adrian Newey were vociferous about their dissatisfaction with the Renault F1 engine this season, with team owner Mateschitz threatening to pull Red Bull out of the championship for much of the year.

After various avenues for changing engine supplier fell through, Red Bull ultimately retained Renault power with TAG Heuer badging for 2016.

Horner argued that Renault's senior management was more detached from F1 than their Mercedes and Ferrari counterparts, so the public attacks served as a wake-up call.

"This is a very competitive business and as far as I'm concerned, I've only ever told you the truth," said Horner.

"If you look at actually what I've said, I don't think there's anything particularly unfair in the comments that have been made.

"The Renault board are quite distant from what's going on.

"It's not like [Mercedes'] Dieter Zetsche, who attends quite a few races, or Sergio Marchionne [of Ferrari].

"I guess part of being vocal was also to get those messages back to the Renault board that there's some issues here and they need to be resolved."

Horner feels Renault's conservatism as a company held it back after big promises were made following the 2014 campaign.

"They're quite an established and conservative organisation and, of course, our DNA is that we want to push, we want to get on, we want to make progress," he said.

"Obviously a lot of promises were made over the last quarter of the year and the closed season of '14 into '15.

"Unfortunately, as other Mercedes teams have made progress, the gap has grown bigger and Ferrari have made a step.

"You end up falling further and further back and that was unfortunately the situation that we found ourselves in."