Cadillac Cash Lures Red Bull’s Best – Christian Horner’s two-decade reign at Red Bull Racing has been reported as officially ended, but documents from UK’s companies house show only the Red Bull boss has been removed as a director. His settlement is likely to be a drawn out affair, with the new Austrian overlords dragging their heels until January, when the Employment tribunal of a female employee dismissed by the team last season is head.

Whilst the  deal to pay off Horner is far from complete, what is certain is that Milton Keynes is now under the new stewardship of Laurent Mekies.

Horner’s departure closes a chapter that yielded multiple championships, with a team built on a siege mentality culture of  “us against the world,” Horner created a fiercely loyal core of staff. That loyalty to Red Bull Racing, however, may soon be tested. Last month, reports warned of a potential exodus if Horner popped up in another Formula 1 garage. The early rumour mill pointed him towards Cadillac’s all-new project or perhaps a seat at Alpine’s ongoing game of musical chairs.

 

The Cadillac gospel

It has since become apparent that some Red Bull employees had “Horner clauses” in their contracts, allowing them to walk if the boss was to leave. Given that several notable figures have already packed up their desks, Mekies now faces an HR nightmare at the precise moment a new heavyweight competitor has arrived waving a chequebook large enough to have its own postcode.

Cadillac, a brand owned by the £38 billion American General Motors auto manufacturer is set to join F1 in 2026, is not so much recruiting as strip-mining the paddock. They need a full technical and operational staff in place for their first car to run at the end of January, and according to veteran F1 reporter Roger Benoit, their strategy is so elegantly simple it could fit on a Post-it: take the salary figure of an engineer or technician, double it, and wait for the yes.

Benoit says Cadillac’s recruiters are on a cross-paddock pilgrimage, from Brackley to Maranello, telling staff: “If you make 100 thousand dollars now, we’ll give you 200 thousand.” They are essentially the Willy Wonka of F1 employment — except instead of golden tickets, it’s direct bank transfers.

Whilst Cadillac remains an emerging F1 team, for now they don’;t have to worry about issues such as the cost cap, which anyway excludes the drivers and the best three paid employees within the team. But it’s the perfect opportunity for a company that sells vehicles with enough chrome to be seen from space, and if matters continue the McLaren hospitality chef might also be getting an offer to defect.

 

The risks for Cadillac

Of course, as Benoit notes, paying double for everyone does risk Cadillac assembling the most expensive collection of strangers in the sport’s history. You can imagine the first team meeting: “Hi, I’m your new colleague. I was at Red Bull for twelve years, and I’ve no idea who you are, but aren’t these pay packets lovely?”

Still, for a start-up operation, nothing says “we’re serious” quite like throwing briefcases of cash at the problem. Whether that seriousness extends to building a competitive car is a question for another day.

Team principal Graeme Lowdon insists that hiring drivers is not a priority. The rumour mill suggests Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas are the most likely pairing, the former freshly released by Red Bull, the latter keeping Mercedes’ reserve seat warm.

Reports this week claimed Perez was already signed, but Lowden is apparently “sighing” at those stories. Perhaps they want to finish recruiting half of Milton Keynes before deciding who will steer the thing. But given the glacial pace of the 2025 driver market, they can afford to play hard to get.

F1 plays down impending “crisis”

 

No – “we’re building a family”

Red Bull, meanwhile, must hold onto their staff while fending off Cadillac’s advances. The post-Horner shake-up was never going to be smooth, but the timing of a well-funded rival strolling into the paddock with a giant novelty cheque book could hardly be worse.

Milton Keynes’ competitive success has been built on a tightly knit technical team, and while replacing a driver can be done in an off-season, replacing a network of experienced designers and engineers is a far trickier business. Lose too many of them, and even the most dominant car can start to look very average, very quickly.

The Judge13 notes that Cadillac’s “double or nothing” tactic is a refreshingly blunt approach to Formula 1 recruitment. No false modesty, no “we’re building a family,” just a straight-up bribe so obvious it might as well be printed on the team’s letterhead. It’s capitalism with the subtlety of a brass band in your living room.

If Red Bull wants to keep its people, perhaps Mekies should introduce his own countermeasure — maybe the best Italian double espresso shots money can buy for the staff who agree to stay.

 

Small team’s engineers’ pay rises

The real winners here might be the engineers at smaller teams, who now have a legitimate excuse to wander into HR and demand a pay rise. “I’m not saying I’ll leave, but I have been contacted by a mysterious American team offering me a company car and a driver called Valtteri.

A technical department in a Formula One team is not just a collection of people fulfilling job titles, it is a living network of shared experience. When Red Bull’s Adrian Newey designed a component, he did so with intimate knowledge of how his aerodynamics group, vehicle dynamics specialists, and production engineers will interpret and deliver it. That collective familiarity is what allows a concept to move from CAD file to race-winning part in minimal time.

Cadillac’s decision to offer double salaries is an attempt to fast-track the accumulation of that intellectual capital. By extracting key individuals from a single team — in this case Red Bull’s Milton Keynes base — they not only gain knowledge of design philosophy and processes, but also risk fragmenting that team’s ability to maintain development momentum.

Schumacher shock lifeline

 

 

Potential shortcut top success

The approach carries risk. Engineers who thrive in one environment may not automatically integrate into another. The absence of pre-existing working relationships can slow decision-making, especially in the crucible of a compressed development calendar.

Yet if Cadillac can balance the attraction of big salaries with a coherent technical structure, they could shortcut what most new entrants face — years of incremental improvement before reaching competitiveness. The real question is whether they can retain these high-value recruits long enough for that investment to yield its competitive return.

 

MORE F1 NEWS – From $100m to $50m? Verstappen value collapses

Max Verstappen has confirmed he will remain with Red Bull Racing for the 2026 season, ending speculation that he might move to rivals such as Mercedes. The announcement came during media day at the Hungarian Grand Prix, where Verstappen made clear that despite holding discussions with Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, he will stay with the Milton Keynes-based outfit.

It is not the first time Wolff has approached the four-time world champion. Last season, Verstappen was considered a possible replacement for Lewis Hamilton, though that opportunity never materialised. The difference this year is that Red Bull’s performance has slipped, with the team currently fourth in the Constructors’ Championship and Verstappen trailing the championship leader by 97 points.

Former Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes this decline in performance could have played a key role in Verstappen’s decision to stay put. Speaking to Coinpoker, Montoya argued that the Dutchman’s market value is not what it was during his dominant title-winning campaigns. “If I was negotiating with Max last year when he was winning the world championship, let’s say, it would have cost $100 million,” Montoya said. “This year he’s in a struggling car. The number could be $50 million. Maybe that was the reason he stayed.”….. READ MORE