Christian Horner twice transformed Red Bull into Formula One’s dominant team over his two decades in charge, but he was unceremoniously axed on Wednesday after declining fortunes and internal disputes.
A Red Bull team whose time at the top was clearly ending — Max Verstappen won just two of 14 races to end last season — and a draining spell early last year when he was cleared of inappropriate behavior toward a female team member should have rung alarm bells for the 51-year-old. Instead, just as he did when those allegations emerged in February last year, Horner carried on working in the hope he could reignite another period of dominance.
Sebastian Vettel won four consecutive titles under Horner from 2010 to 2013, with Verstappen winning the past four. Red Bull also won six constructors’ crowns in that time.
Photo: AP
However on Wednesday, with this season’s car not competitive with rivals McLaren, a discontented Verstappen and the constant hemorrhaging of pivotal backroom talent, his 20 years as CEO was ended brutally.
A characteristic of Horner’s — highlighted by his close friend and ex-F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone after he was cleared of improper conduct last year — might have been his ultimate downfall.
“I said to Christian at the beginning: ‘Come out and say you’re sorry,’ but he told me: ‘No way, I don’t want to compromise, I have done nothing that I need to say sorry for,’” Ecclestone said.
His wife, former Spice Girls pop star Geri Halliwell, simply told him: “Make it all go away.”
Horner has never been one to compromise since turning his back on trying to make it as a racing driver and going into management.
Appointed as the youngest team principal in the F1 paddock aged 31 in 2005, he oversaw eight drivers’ titles — a remarkable achievement by any yardstick.
He became a fixture on the grid wall over the past two decades, the tactical mastermind of Verstappen’s four straight titles.
Eloquent, bright and combative, his spats with his opposite number at Mercedes, Toto Wolff, have made for compelling viewing, not least when Verstappen controversially deprived Lewis Hamilton of an unprecedented eighth world crown on the last lap of the last race of the 2021 season in Abu Dhabi.
As team principal and chief executive of Red Bull Racing, Horner had an enormous amount of power and sway over a vast racing empire.
During his time at the top, the company’s workforce ballooned from 450 to 1,500, with one of that number’s allegations shocking the F1 community.
Wolff described the investigation as “an issue for all of Formula One,” while Williams chief James Vowles said that “we all have to look each other in the mirror and make sure that we are ... acting in a way that we can only be proud of, not today, but in the next 10 years.”
The turning point in Horner’s career was when he first came into contact with the ambitious Austrian company Red Bull and its “father,” Dietrich Mateschitz, when he was in F3000.
Mateschitz, who died in 2022, had purchased the Jaguar F1 outfit in 2004 — and saw enough in the young Horner to appoint him as team boss for Red Bull’s top-level debut in 2005.
Among the many inspired moves Horner made was to bring on board Adrian Newey, ranked as one of the most talented engineers and designers of his or any other generation.
Newey’s departure for Aston Martin this season signaled the foundations on which success had been built at Red Bull by Horner were foundering.
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