Red Bull ‘mass exodus’ detailed after Horner sacking – The shock sacking of Christian Horner may well have been the final act in the night of the long knives, as the new Austrian overlords who own the team flexed their muscle to remove what to them was an irritant. Horner had been given carte blanche to run the racing outfit as he saw fit under the auspices of the energy drinks entrepreneurial founder, but the death of Didi Mateschitz during the 2023 US Grand Prix weekend was to change all that.
The men in grey suits who inherited Mateschitz’s authority following his passing made an attempt early in 2024 to have Horner removed. He was accused of “inappropriate behaviour’ by a female employee of the racing team and despite being vindicated twice, leaked documents from the investigation were sent to over 150 senior paddock members in an attempt to discredit him.
Horner built ‘us and them’ culture
Christian Horner was tasked with sorting out the mess that was the corporate run Jaguar F1 team acquired by Red Bull in late 2004 and quickly created a culture of ‘us against the world’ with his fledging outfit. The boisterous group of mechanics would blast out music from their garage post race, with tunes like “who let the dogs out” to celebrate any measure of success the team would have on track.
The Red Bull team principal persuaded F1 car design guru Adrian Newey to join the team during its second season and success was soon to follow. As the V8 era came to an end, Red Bull would win four consecutive driver titles with Sebastian Vettel along with four constructor titles into the bargain.
With the advent of the all conquering Mercedes V6 turbo hybrid, the dogs from Milton Keynes were put back in their kennel for there best part of a decade, before Max Verstappen fought a titanic battle with Lewis Hamilton in 2021. The last race, last lap show down in Abu Dhabi, was to mark the end of the German brands dominance and a new champion crowned who clearly possessed a unique talent for racing.
A number of factors were to play out which finally saw Horner summarily dismissed from his 20 year term in charge of Red Bull Racing and the headlines proclaiming the fact that Newey was to leave the team, certainly didn’t help. Yet suggestions this was the result of a drop in performance from the Red Bull team is nonsense, given the forever ebb and flow of teams rising and falling in the constructor rankings.
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By way of contrast, since the inception of Red Bull Racing, Ferrari have won one constructor’s championship and one drivers title when compared to the fourteen claimed by Red Bull under the leadership of Christian Horner. It may be yet, the ex-Red Bull bosses greatest achievement is yet to be unveiled, as the new Red Bull powertrains division.
Having been repeatedly failed by Renault in the Mercedes years, when Honda initially decided to exit the sport before the new 2026 powertrains were due Horner advocated the team attempt something never done before in F1. Red Bull once a customer team for engines, would in future build their own in partnership with Ford which will debut in early February next season.
The timing of Horner’s execution by the Austrians was deliberate, with two weekends ahead with no F1 racing, the immediate reactions from those who inhabit the paddock were not readily available. And by the time the F1 circus rolled into Spa Francorchamps, the new status quo was established and few were prepared to comment on Horner’s dismissal.
However, Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz, never afraid of creating controversy, revealed something that TJ13 reported in the days following Horner’s exit from Milton Keynes in that a raft of people from the Red Bull organisation have circulated their CV’s with other F1 teams.
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“LOTS…. set to leave the team”
“We’re hearing LOTS of stories… LOTS of Horner loyalists set to leave the team. Lots of people not knowing whats going on at Red Bull. So we are seeing change ahead – turmoil if you want to call it that,” said Kravitz on his notebook feature.
“If you’re looking for an explanation all I’ll very quickly say it seems to be that it was just the power struggle that we’ve been following since Bahrain last year and that Christian ran out of support, ran out of friends.”
Kravitz continues: “Will this be a different team without his aggressive spikes character? – yes. Will it suffer from not having an aggressive spike character – piranha, a piranha of the piranha club in charge of Red Bull? Well it might do. Will Red Bull be… a less effective, less aggressive, less incisive, less spiky team without Christian Horner at the head of it. I think the answer has to be yes it will be’ a less aggressive, incisive and potentially spiky team without Christian Horner in charge.”
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Red Bull will be “less effective”
Laurent Mekies who has been appointed as Horner’s replacement has spent his life in F1 working for a variety of teams along with a spell at the FIA. He fits the corporate image the new owners in Austria wish to create in an attempt to propel the team forward.
But to reverse the twenty years of the entrepreneurial culture Horner created, will come at a cost as Kravitz notes. “Less incisive…. less effective” and with the loss of a significant number of senior personnel who are aggrieved at the actions of the Austrian directors, it appears the only way is down for the team responsible for the minnow to giant F1 story.
In the battle for control it appears Oliver Mintzlaff and Didi Mateschitz’s son are prepared to destroy the Red Bull team made in the image of Horner, whether it can be rebuilt to its former glory under the corporate governance from Salzburg, only time will tell.
Formula One may have just experienced a defining moment in its future direction as race control decided there would be no wet racing at the 2025 Belgium Grand Prix. With the start of the race delayed almost 90 minutes due to wet weather, when the action finally began on track the conditions were dry enough for the drivers to burn out their intermediate tyres in just a handful of laps.
Drivers and teams who had rightly set their cars up based on the forecast of extreme wet weather were compromised and the fans were robbed of exciting racing and instead paid to view a largely processional race in the Ardennes Forrest.
For those who hark back to the 50’s and 60’s when F1 was a blood and guts sport, this is no longer the case and rightly so. Improvements in safety mean that drivers are rarely even injured when hitting the wall at 200 mph but some were clearly frightened by the low visibility from the spray as exploratory laps were made behind the safety car….. READ MORE
