{"id":787846,"date":"2026-07-08T22:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787846\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T22:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:05:10","slug":"horner-plays-down-mekies-impact-on-red-bull-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787846\/","title":{"rendered":"Horner plays down Mekies’ impact on Red Bull revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Horner<\/a> believes Red Bull’s impressive turnaround during the second half of last season, which saw Max Verstappen come close to securing a fifth consecutive world title, would have happened regardless, given how long it typically takes for rebuilding efforts to translate into results in Formula 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The former team principal and CEO of the Milton Keynes-based team returned to the Formula 1 paddock for the first time since his dismissal a year ago at Silverstone. Since then, he had largely stayed out of the spotlight, aside from occasional appearances in the MotoGP paddock and a handful of brief interviews.<\/p>\n

Following his departure from Red Bull last year, the team, under the leadership of Laurent Mekies<\/a>, began a rapid resurgence that turned into a title fight with McLaren lasting until the final race, despite Verstappen having fallen as many as 104 points behind the championship leader after Zandvoort.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Times, Horner said that meaningful changes in Formula 1 typically take between nine and 12 months to have an impact, meaning last season’s turnaround would have unfolded in the same way regardless of his departure. He added that his legacy should be judged on what he achieved during his time in charge, stressing that he is satisfied with everything he accomplished and is not seeking recognition.<\/p>\n

He said: “Things usually take probably close to nine to 12 months to see change, so everything that happened last year, if I\u2019d have been knocked over by a bus (and not replaced), it would have played out the same way. I can only be judged on what I did, so history will decide that (legacy), I guess. But I\u2019m not looking for any plaudits. I\u2019m happy in myself with what I was able to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"red-bull-should-thank-christian-horner\"\/<\/p>\n

Photo: Race Pictures<\/p>\n

Horner beams with pride over Red Bull Powertrains’ success: ‘There were a lot of doubters’In the same interview, the Brit said he was immensely proud <\/a>of the progress made by the Red Bull Powertrains project, which he had played a key role in launching, highlighting how it has developed into what is now widely regarded as Formula 1’s benchmark power unit. He pointed to the achievement of building a competitive engine operation from scratch in just a few years, despite having almost no initial experience within the team.<\/p>\n

He also praised the contribution of Ford and ExxonMobil, stressing that the project grew from an almost empty facility into a fully operational engine division in record time. Horner noted that the factory was built within months, the first engine was running little more than a year later, and hundreds of employees were recruited, including many experienced engineers from Mercedes HPP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure while it is very inconvenient to be judged as the best combustion engine in Formula 1 it is a hell of an achievement. There\u2019s a lot of others that haven\u2019t achieved that and they\u2019ve been doing it for 75 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat relationship with Ford, the fuel ExxonMobil have contributed, that was a bubble-wrap factory five years ago. There was one person that had a little bit of experience at Cosworth, and that was all that team had. Within 55 weeks we built a factory, within 14 months we had an engine up and running, 650 people were recruited into that business, and over 200 of them came out of Mercedes Benz or HPP.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Horner believes Red Bull’s impressive turnaround during the second half of last season, which saw Max Verstappen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,1199,817,35119,813,816,14758,946,85],"class_list":["post-787846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-christian-horner","tag-f1","tag-f1-news","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-laurent-mekies","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}