{"id":344721,"date":"2025-12-14T13:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/344721\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T13:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:20:08","slug":"max-verstappen-would-have-been-f1-champion-if-christian-horner-was-dismissed-earlier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/344721\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Max Verstappen would have been F1 champion if Christian Horner was dismissed earlier\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite an impressive late resurgence, Max Verstappen<\/a> missed out on his fifth consecutive Formula 1 world title in 2025. Helmut Marko, however, believes the Red Bull driver would have become champion had Christian Horner left the team at an earlier stage.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, it was announced that Red Bull and Marko would immediately end their longstanding collaboration, despite an ongoing contract.<\/a> It occurred in the same season that saw Horner be sacked as team principal in July after 20 years with the Austrian squad.<\/p>\n

Horner\u2019s dismissal appeared to bring an end to a power struggle within Red Bull, although Marko played down that characterisation. \u201cThat\u2019s how it\u2019s always been described in the media, but it was nothing personal,\u201d the 82-year-old told De Limburger.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether with Didi [the late Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz], I founded Red Bull Racing<\/a> in 2005. We appointed Horner as team principal, and I was there as a supervisor. In principle, the power was always in Austria – we made the decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mateschitz passed away in October 2022. \u201cI remember a party earlier that year, ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix, Didi was there but not in good health. Christian came up to me and said \u2018he won\u2019t make it to the end of the year\u2019. From that moment on, Christian began cozying up to Chalerm Yoovidhya,\u201d Marko said, referring to Red Bull\u2019s Thai co-owner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Didi passed away later that year, Christian did everything he could to take control of the company with Yoovidhya\u2019s support. On behalf of \u2018Austria\u2019, I did everything possible to prevent that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren,Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Erik Junius<\/p>\n

That effort was successful, but it required Horner\u2019s dismissal and the decision did not feel like a victory to Marko. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had to act because performance on track was falling behind. And if we had done it earlier, we would have got things back on track sooner and Max Verstappen would have been world champion this year. I am absolutely convinced of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstappen, under the leadership of Horner\u2019s replacement Laurent Mekies, mounted a comeback from a seemingly hopeless position after the summer break and finished just two points behind McLaren<\/a>\u2019s world champion Lando Norris<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut those final years with Horner were not pleasant,\u201d Marko continued on the Horner topic. \u201cDirty games were being played. Do you remember when it was claimed that I said Mexicans were less focused than Dutch or German people during Sergio Perez<\/a>\u2019s time? That was fabricated – possibly by them [Horner’s camp].<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same goes for the claim that in 2024 I spread the story that our engine development was behind schedule and that we would therefore lose Ford as a partner. I never said that, but Horner wanted to use it to have me suspended. Because of Max’s support in Jeddah, that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Horner lost Yoovidhya\u2019s support. \u201cMore and more often, we were able to prove that Horner lied about all sorts of things,\u201d Marko concluded. \u201cOnce Chalerm realised that too, he changed his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite an impressive late resurgence, Max Verstappen missed out on his fifth consecutive Formula 1 world title in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[146997,49,48,578,143666,576,577,150434,1885,2190,82],"class_list":["post-344721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-abu-dhabi-testing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-helmut-marko-u2018max-verstappen-would-have-been-f1-champion-if-christian-horner-was-dismissed-earlieru2019","tag-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344721","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=344721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}