Last Updated on July 12 2025, 2:15 pm

This weeks sudden sacking of Christian Horner by the Red Bull parent company in Austria has led to the great and good in the Formula One paddock speculating over the strange timing of the decision. A plethora of theories have been advanced, although Horner revealed in an emotional farewell speech to the staff in Milton Keynes, he had been given no reason.

A performance clause in the ex-Red Bull bosses contract has been widely suggested, given half way through the 2025 campaign Red Bull are in their worst position of P4 since the terrible year that was 2015.

The alleged ‘brain drain’ which has seen senior engineers leave Red Bull over the past two years, beginning with Chief engineer, Rob Marshall leaving for a technical director role at McLaren. Then the self exiled part time Adrian Newey announced he was leaving the team last year, and the decision was loosely connected to the media storm facing Horner over allegations made by a female employee of the team.

 

 

 

Disastrous Red Bull second seat contributes to Horner’s downfall

The Red Bull boss was exonerated twice over the allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” although a UK employment tribunal is listed for hearing next January. Next to depart Red Bull was their long standing sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, yet his move was a huge promotion as Audi offered him the role of team principal.

Each of these personnel departures, appears motivated by fresh opportunities rather than dissatisfaction with the Red Bull team boss and it has been the case the culture within the Milton Keynes Racing outfit has been one to ‘grow hour own talent.’

Another line of criticism Horner has received has been failing to solve the problem that is the second seat at Red Bull Racing. At Christian’s behest back in 2021, the team failed to promote on of its junior drivers to the vacant seat left by the departure of Alex Albon.

The curse of the second Red Bull seat began back in 2019, when Daniel Ricciardo who had competed and beaten Verstappen made the strange call to leave the team for Renault. Pierre Gasly was promoted alongside Max for half the season, but then demoted back to the junior team in favour of Alex Albon.

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Perez tenure a departure from Red Bull recruitment history

Albon survived the year and was then contracted again for 2020, but his performance when measured against his team mate was deemed insufficient. In came Sergio Perez and the Mexican was a success in his first season, winning his second Grand Prix in Baku. Yet his 35 point deficit to Mercedes’ number two, Valtteri Bottas, handed the silver arrows their record eight consecutive constructors’ title.

Finishing third in the drivers 2022 championship, was enough for Red Bull to claim their first team title since the days of Vettel and Webber almost a decade prior back in 2013. As the 2023 campaign got under way, Perez won two of the first four races for Red Bull in what was to be a record destroying season for the team.

Sergio appeared to fade somewhat in the second half of that year, but finished strongly enough to give Red Bull their first ever 1-2 in the drivers’ championship. But the writing was on the wall for the Mexican as the Red Bull car design took a direction which made the RB20 difficult to drive for Perez. Having started the 2024 campaign running second behind his team mate, Perez’s form collapsed after round six in Montreal and scored just 48 points across the final eighteen race weekends of the year.

Inevitably Sergio was replaced come last winter, despite having signed a contract extension for 2025 during the early rounds of the European season. This was reported to cost the team in excess of $15m, a mistake which was laid by Dr. Helmut Marko firmly at team boss Christian Horner’s feet. Keen to reestablish the routine that Red Bull would recruit from its pool of junior drivers, somewhat surprisingly Liam Lawson was promoted alongside Max Verstappen this season.

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Tsunoda just 7 points in RB21

Yuki Tsunoda appeared to be the natural successor to Perez, given the Japanese driver was entering his fifth year of competition in the sport. Yet his chance was to come sooner than he expected, with Lawson dropped back to the Racing Bulls after just two Grand Prix weekends of the year.

Tsunoda appeared to adapt to the “tricky” RB21 quickly, scoring points in just his second outing in Bahrain. Two further points finishes in Miami and in Emilia-Romagne appeared to suggest the Honda backed driver was heading in the right direction. Yet the next five races saw Yuki finish outside the points and his qualifying gap to Verstappen across their ten races together is over 0.8 seconds.

The failure to solve the conundrum of the second Red Bull driver is likely to have been part of the reason why Horner finds himself now unemployed. Yet Dr. Helmut Marko now states, he is “optimistic” over the Japanese driver who has been working tirelessly to find a way to manage the RB21 car in particular at the recent outing I Silverstone.

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Marko confirms Yuki improvement

“Yuki Tsunoda has struggled on some GP weekends, but we already saw an upward trend in England: the gap to Max was smaller than before in most of the free practice sessions, and he was able to start from eleventh place on the grid in England,” Marko explains in his Speedweek column.

Marko is referring to Yuki’s qualifying performance which although it saw him start the race in only P12, his Q1 time was less than 3/10ths behind the master of the one lap, Max Verstappen. Unfortunately Red Bull elected to set their cars up with a low downforce package, which meant the unexpected torrential rain on Sunday meant they were not competitive. “We’ve had intensive discussions with Yuki; he also works with sports psychologists. Unfortunately, like Max, he had no chance in the race with this wing. But we’re noticing an improvement in performance, and we’re optimistic that this will soon be reflected in the points,” Marko concluded.

Yuki’s record in Belgium next up is hardly convincing, having just one points finish at the Spa circuit in four visits during his F1 career. Next up before the summer break will be the Netherlands, where Tsunoda has retired twice and never scored a single point.

 

 

 

F1 drivers ‘gagged’ over hate 2026 regulations

The 2026 Formula one season will end almost a decade of dithering from the FIA over the next generation of power units to be introduced into the sport. An FIA working party was established in 2017 to discuss the future of F1 power with the primary goal at the time being to attract more manufacturers into the sport.

This obsession with expanding the number of OEM’s led to a rather different process than has been seen in F1 previously. Given a nigh on blank sheet of paper as the starting point, a wide range of potential powertrain concepts were explored.

At the time it appeared that hybrid power units would be the future on the road car market  which was forecast by the likes of Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and Honda. As the discussions dragged on it became clear the intended 2021 deadline for the introduction of the next phase of F1 power would be missed…. READ MORE