When the third longest serving team principal was sacked last week it marked the end of an era in Formula One. At just 31 years of age, Christian Horner was appointed the boss of the fledging Red Bull team recently acquired from Ford in the form of the failed Jaguar F1 programme.
At the time, F1 was in a very different place than it is presently. A number of failed F1 teams had been and gone and there was significant concern over the potential loss of manufacturers who were propping up the grid. During just the Red Bull team’s first season of competition in the sport in 2005, minnow outfit Minardi was put up for sale.
The conditions of the sale were that the new owner invest $400m in the racing team and that its base remain at its historical location in Faenza, Italy. Having recently acquired the Red Bull team, co-founder of the energy drinks empire, Didi Mateschitz, agreed to Paul Stoddart’s terms and bought the Minardi Team to function as an operation where drivers from Red Bull’s junior programme could move into F1.
An era of F1 fragility
During the turbulent times ahead where Toyota and Honda withdrew from F1 on a whim, the Toro Rosso team remained committed to the sport and on one occasion was the reason the grid failed to shrink to just nine racing outfits. F1’s supremo, Bernie Ecclestone was desperate to ensure the number of teams numbered at least ten each season such that he even put his own cash on the line to provide three new teams some “prize” money back in 2010.
All three teams eventually failed and without the arrival of Haas F1 in 2016, the grid would have consisted of just nine teams. To say F1 was in turmoil in the early 2010’s would be an understatement. And Bernie Ecclestone greatly appreciated the stability the two independent Red Bull teams brought to the Formula One together with the fact they almost universally supported his various proposals for change to move F1 forward.
Now F1 is in rude health, with an 11th team in Cadillac joining the grid for 2026. In recent times there’s even been talk from the FIA about opening another round of ‘expressions of interest’ with a view to agreeing a deal with a Chinese outfit to enter F1.
In the current boom times of F1, a number of senior newbies have failed to appreciate the role Toro Rosso played during the sport’s era of troubles an have called for Red Bull to be forced to divest of its second racing outfit complaining two seats at the decision making table for the Red Bull owners is unfair on the competition.
Calls for two F1 team ownership to be banned
At the launch of the 2024 McLaren, CEO Zak Brown raised the topic of the two Red Bull owned teams stating, “I think the A-B team is a real problem moving forward. I think co-ownership, you don’t really have that in any other sport, and I think that provides a lot of conflict of interest.”
Yet with the FIA and Ernie Ecclestone having begged Didi Mateschitz to save the failing Minardi outfit, there has always been a reticence to legislate against anyone owning more than one F1 team. Zac Brown believes now the sport in is rude health, the matter should be tackled and Red Bull forced to sell.
“AlphaTauri is, from what I understand, moving to the UK, which I think will benefit both teams,” said the McLaren boss in the winter of 2023/4. “This A/B team and co-ownership, which is a whole other level of A/B team, is of big concern for the health of the sport, the fairness of the sport.
“When these [regulations] were put in place, the sport was in a different place. You had a huge gap between people like ourselves who had huge budgets and smaller teams, and now everybody’s pretty much at the [cost] cap – so everyone’s playing with the same size of bat, to use a baseball term. It might give someone an unfair advantage and I think that’s something we need to tackle quickly.”
Why a 12th F1 team is now on the cards
The corporate future for Red Bull
F1’s new supremo, Stefano Domenicali, hails from the era when Red Bull and Toro Rosso entered the sport and the calls for a forced sale from Brown some eighteen months ago were shut down due to his influence in the matter. Christian Horner is known to have held intensive discussions on the topic with both the FIA and Domenicali which resulted in the McLaren boss adjusting his proposed time scale to 2030, for when the matter should be resolved.
With Horner gone from Red Bull, their representation at the power brokers table in F1 is certainly diminished. Laurent Mekies is a new kid on the block in terms of being an F1 team principal and lacks the very presence that a heavyweight like Horner brings into a meeting of negotiations.
The Red Bull F1 programmes will almost certainly become corporate entities, rather than the plaything and passion of its multi-billionaire founder and the Red Bull F1 team boss. The Red Bull junior driver programme was something Dr. Helmut Marko persuaded the late Mateschitz to support, even before he bought his first F1 team.
The ‘handshake’ parties have disappeared
By his own admission Marko is searching for his own replacement and in recent months publicly suggested Sebastian Vettel wold be a good fit for the role. Yet Vettel has yet to embrace the opportunity apparently on offer, but when Dr. Marko steps down another pillar of the F1 Red Bull Racing establishment will disappear.
It will be tough for the men in grey suits from Austria to persuade F1 that they represent the legacy of decisions made 20 years ago by Mateschitz, Marko and Horner in conjunction with the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone. The handshakes and gentleman’s agreements were between those of a different era and their self binding deals no longer apply.
It won’t be long before Brown and maybe others return to the two team ownership debate, suggesting it provides undue influence amongst the competitors in a sport, which numbers just eleven teams. With no one left to ‘remember’ the deals which may have saved F1 some 20 years ago, the Racing Bulls will surely be up for sale before the first year of the new 2026 regulations is out.
Marko’s invisible hand in Horner sacking
The Formula 1 paddock is no stranger to drama, but even by its own telenovela-like standards, the sacking of Christian Horner as team principal of Red Bull Racing has caused ripples that may turn into a tsunami. After two decades at the helm, during which he steered the team to multiple world championships with Sebastian Vettel and later Max Verstappen, Horner’s abrupt dismissal last week sent shockwaves through Milton Keynes and beyond.
But if Horner was surprised, perhaps he should not have been. Because according to German outlet Bild, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision — it was a long-gestating plot involving some of Red Bull’s most powerful figures. And chief among them? One Helmut Marko.
While many in the paddock had assumed Horner was protected by his long service, his public profile, and let’s not forget, his marriage to a former Spice Girl, it now appears he may have severely underestimated just how thin the ice had become. And who was quietly chipping away at it beneath his feet? None other than Red Bull’s grizzled senior advisor, the ever-enigmatic Marko…. READ MORE
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An interesting twist would be if an investment group now bought Red Bulls and then installed Christian Horner to run it and outperform the imploded Red Bull.
Forgive the typo above, M’Lud; I was being distracted. I meant, of course that:
An interesting twist would be if an investment group now bought Racing Bulls and then installed Christian Horner to run it and outperform the imploded Red Bull.
Wishfull thinking.
All sensible discussions by those ensconced in Paddock Life, are suggesting that the most likely new home for Horner is a a “Post Flavio, Joint Ownership TP / CEO role at Renault / Alpine / Enstone”