{"id":8032,"date":"2025-07-19T12:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T12:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/8032\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T12:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T12:32:09","slug":"christian-horner-leads-tributes-to-red-bull-icon-after-heartbreaking-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/8032\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Horner leads tributes to Red Bull icon after heartbreaking news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Horner, the former Red Bull F1 team principal, has led tributes to Felix Baumgartner following the death of the iconic daredevil and skydiver.<\/p>\n

Baumgartner, 56, died on Thursday following a paragliding accident in Italy.<\/p>\n

Christian Horner pays tribute to Red Bull legend Felix Baumgartner<\/p>\n

Baumgartner was in Porto Sant\u2019Elpidio, on Italy\u2019s Adriatic coast, when he got into difficulties while flying a motorised paraglider.<\/p>\n

He lost control and fell close to a hotel swimming pool that was being used by holidaymakers and children.<\/p>\n

Reports say that Baumgartner was killed instantly in the impact, with others indicating that he may have suffered a medical episode and died before the crash.<\/p>\n

A hotel employee was struck by the paraglider and was taken to hospital with neck injuries.<\/p>\n

Go deeper: Christian Horner\u2019s shock Red Bull exit<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Why Christian Horner? Why now? Shock exit may not guarantee Max Verstappen<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Ranked: Is Christian Horner sack the biggest shock in F1 history?<\/a><\/p>\n

In a post on Instagram\u2019s story function, which allows images and videos to be uploaded for a maximum 24-hour period, Horner, who left his role as Red Bull team principal earlier this month, paid tribute to Baumgartner.<\/p>\n

He wrote: \u201cRest in peace Felix Baumgartner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baumgartner rose to fame in 2012 when he jumped to Earth from the edge of space as part of the Red Bull Stratos project.<\/p>\n

The Austrian reached an estimated top speed of Mach 1.25 (843.6mph) during the stunt, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier without vehicular power.<\/p>\n

He took 10 minutes to fall from the upper stratosphere, with only the last few thousand feet negotiated with the aid of a parachute.<\/p>\n

Baumgartner\u2019s achievement famously led to Sebastian Vettel, at the time a Red Bull driver and the reigning F1 World Champion, donning a special astronaut-inspired helmet design at the 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix (below).<\/p>\n

The Red Bull Racing team shared images of Vettel\u2019s tribute helmet on Friday with the accompanying caption: \u201cSeb\u2019s stratospheric helmet. Inspired by Felix\u2019s record-breaking jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sebastian Vettel wore a special tribute helmet to Felix Baumgartner at the 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix<\/p>\n

Speaking after his record-breaking 2012 jump, Baumgartner, who went on to race an Audi in the Nurburgring 24-hour race in 2014, recalled the moment he opened the door of his capsule on the edge of space.<\/p>\n

He said:\u00a0\u201cI looked up and the sky was black.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was completely silent. All you can hear is yourself breathing. It was very peaceful.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell you, when I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t think about breaking records any more, you don\u2019t think about gaining scientific data; the only thing that you want is to come back alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt\u2019s a very hostile environment up there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the suit fails, your blood would start to boil and you\u2019d die in 15 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parachute could malfunction or you could flat spin, which pushes all your blood into your skull.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that happens, at a certain RPM your blood only has one way out \u2014 through your eyeballs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next:\u00a0Jules Bianchi remembered: \u2018The conditions were much worse than they looked\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Horner, the former Red Bull F1 team principal, has led tributes to Felix Baumgartner following the death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,1883,578,576,577,1613,44,1882,82],"class_list":["post-8032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-christian-horner","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-news","tag-red-bull","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032","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=8032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}