{"id":96341,"date":"2025-08-26T04:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T04:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/96341\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T04:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T04:54:12","slug":"fired-red-bull-supremo-christian-horners-exit-mercedes-boss-toto-wolff-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/96341\/","title":{"rendered":"Fired Red Bull supremo Christian Horner’s exit, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Red Bull<\/a> principal Christian Horner was an “arsehole” but his absence has left a void in the sport, says rival Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.<\/p>\n

Horner had been Red Bull team principal since it entered F1 as a full constructor in 2005 before he was sacked for no official reason earlier this year.<\/a><\/p>\n

Horner was the latest in a series of high-profile executives to leave the team over the last year and a half.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Former teammate tangled in Smith’s drug supply court case<\/a><\/p>\n

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Car design great Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley departed for Sauber, which is soon to become the Audi works team.<\/p>\n

But according to Wolff, Horner’s departure not only impacted Red Bull, but the sport as a whole.<\/p>\n

He said F1 lost a “real personality”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Former Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner and Mercedes GP Executive Director Toto Wolff.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“He’s been acting like an arsehole quite often in the last 12-15 years,” Wolff said to Formula.hu.<\/p>\n

“He operates on completely different values, but even your worst enemy has a best friend.<\/p>\n

“On the other hand, he was hugely successful at what he did. Now that he’s gone, at least for a while, a real personality has left the sport.<\/p>\n

“He was controversial and divisive, but he was one of the main characters here.<\/p>\n

“You could safely say he was as significant as a great driver. If I look at it purely from an F1 perspective, I don’t think there are many old-style team boss dinosaurs left here.<\/p>\n

“Maybe just me. Maybe Fred (Vasseur) is a bit of a dinosaur too.”<\/p>\n

Wolff acknowledged the race for the 2021 F1 championship was also between himself and Horner,<\/p>\n

“If you look at it, it was always an interesting story,” Wolff said.<\/p>\n

“Those years, but especially 2021, it wasn’t just about Max and Lewis, it was about Christian and me. And sometimes it was really hard, it’s in every history book and it always will be.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Horner and Wolff may have another chance to renew their rivalry.\u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“You know, he always said that I love to hate him. So who do I hate now? It seems like I have to find someone else\u2026”<\/p>\n

But Wolff may have another chance to renew his rivalry with Horner as reports claim the former Red Bull boss could return to F1.<\/p>\n

German outlet BILD reported Ferrari had made “informal” contact with Horner in July as rumours swirled over Fred Vasseur’s future at the team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Red Bull principal Christian Horner was an “arsehole” but his absence has left a void in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-96341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96341","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=96341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}