{"id":259101,"date":"2025-11-03T16:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/259101\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T16:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:09:09","slug":"martin-brundle-reveals-why-christian-horner-wouldnt-want-to-return-as-a-team-principal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/259101\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Brundle reveals why Christian Horner &#8216;wouldn&#8217;t want to return as a team principal&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports F1 analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/martin-brundle\/585\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Martin Brundle<\/a> has discussed Laurent Mekies&#8217;s approach to leading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/red-bull-racing\/4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Red Bull Racing<\/a> and why Christian Horner &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t want to come back as a team principal&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The Milton Keynes outfit replaced Horner as Red Bull Racing CEO and team principal with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/racing-bulls-12\/12\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Racing Bulls<\/a> team chief Laurent Mekies on 9 July 2025. Horner later reached a settlement agreement with the Austrian team in September 2025, which is understood to allow the Briton to return to the championship in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Since Mekies arrived at the team, Red Bull has secured 174 points over eight rounds. In comparison, the team scored 172 points in 12 rounds prior to Horner&#8217;s exit. While various factors need to be considered for the jump in performance, Brundle praised Mekies for his approach to the role.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVery impressed and he\u2019s handling it in a very mature way,\u201d Brundle said during the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oV_AisT-vNE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sky Sports F1 Show<\/a>. \u201cEgo, absolutely non-existent. We\u2019re seeing a new type of team principal these days, aren\u2019t we? That\u2019s why Christian wouldn\u2019t want to come back as a team principal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think with more of an engineering background, seems to be the way to tie together these vast quantities of highly specialised people in a team and he\u2019s got help with the politics, with Helmut Marko and others.<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.motorsport.com\/images\/mgl\/2y3eBVp6\/s1000\/martin-brundle.jpg\" alt=\"Martin Brundle\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Martin Brundle<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: James Sutton \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I think it\u2019ll be a collaboration on the [2026] driver choice, probably more so than in the past among the senior people in Red Bull, but I think he actually is the right man for the right time in Formula 1, and that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Multiple teams have gone down a similar route of hiring personnel with engineering backgrounds for the role. For example, Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu previously held the role of trackside engineering director at the American squad, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/sauber\/9\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sauber<\/a> team chief Jonathan Wheatley previously served as Red Bull sporting director and chief mechanic at Benetton and Renault, and Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane came from a background as sporting director, chief operating officer and chief race engineer at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/alpine\/24858\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Alpine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports F1 analyst Martin Brundle has discussed Laurent Mekies&#8217;s approach to leading&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[120293,49,48,1883,578,576,577,25252,120291,2190,120292,82,4962],"class_list":["post-259101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-autu00f3dromo-josu00e9-carlos-pace","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-christian-horner","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-martin-brundle","tag-martin-brundle-reveals-why-christian-horner-wouldnt-want-to-return-as-a-team-principal","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sao-paulo-gp","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}