The Horner Situation, again
I wanted to collect my thoughts on Christian Horner being fired before I wrote anything, and I found some interesting things.
Hello! Welcome to this edition of Formula Curious! It’s nice to have you here. Please, come in, and make yourself comfy.
This time around I have another discussion of Christian Horner. I deliberately didn’t release anything ‘emergency’ styles upon hearing the news of his firing; I wanted to hear who was saying what before saying anything. And, indeed I found some interesting places I hadn’t found before.
I wrote a volume one on Christian Horner at the start of 2024 following on from the Allegations. I've been meaning to come back to discuss what has and has not happened since, but events have overtaken my planning, and here we are.
Horner has been the CEO and Team Principal of Red Bull Racing for 20 years. That's longer than Kimi Antonelli has been alive! Ten years longer than the next longest serving team principal, Toto Wolff.
Horner was someone who "desperately wanted" to get into F1, as per both former F1 Mark Webber and long time pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz. Webber elaborates in his book Aussie Grit that Horner seemed to have seduced by the trappings of the 'F1 lifestyle'. Horner somewhat famously "failed" as a driver before switching to team principal-ling. He wanted his own team, and when he found himself at RBR, he crafted one. But not on paper.
Dietrich Mateschitz, former owner of the Austrian side of Red Bull GmbH, the parent company, allowed RBR to operate as it wished; as Christian Horner wished. Mateschitz intervened only rarely. Not only is Horner responsible for the unalloyed success of Red Bull Racing, it's become very difficult to differentiate between Red Bull Racing and Horner racing. The team has become so Horner, if you will, that all those who didn't like the way him, or the way he ran the team have left. The team remaining are staff loyal to Horner and really unhappy with the present situation.
Horner has been variously described as someone who is devoted to his team and staff, someone who always backs up his own drivers. He was known to show up in press interviews with printouts of data to prove his drivers were right, the penalties were wrong, etc, etc.
But this is the same guy who fuelled plenty of driver rumours himself, encouraging the questions of the notorious second seat at RBR. The same Christian Horner who told Helmut Marko about Mark Webber's retirement, after he promised to keep it secret until Webber was ready to make it public. The disrespectful farewell press releases for Adrian Newey that put Newey's name in the spotlight at the exact time of year he did not want it.
With Horner having sole control of RBR and a strong influence at Racing Bulls, it made him a very powerful person in the paddock. And this is one reason why the allegations against him not being investigated by an external lawyer made me so angry.
His only form of defence, or interaction almost, was attack. He was known for throwing political hand grenades around the paddock. A recent example is saying "it would be embarrassing if we beat them" referring to RBR beating Mercedes next year with their own Red Bull Powertrains engine. This metaphorical grenade bounced back, however, and offended Ford, RBR's technical partner on their new engine project. To my understanding, RBR's relationship with Ford is not far beyond superficial. In that, Ford can leave very easily.
Which leads me nicely to the technical arrogance RBR has come down with of late. Pierre Wache is the technical director at RBR, and is the person responsible for the disaster-car Max Verstappen has been complaining about bitterly, both this year and last. Wache had the strong support of Horner, and Wache has been leading this obsession with having the theoretical fastest car, nevermind if anyone could actually drive it.
The CEO of a company is kind of like a mascot. The recent signs are that Red Bull GmbH are wanting to look a bit more professional in the F1 arena, reflecting that it is an investment. With that in mind, I'm not surprised the company decided to replace Horner as team principal and CEO.
