Red Bull Racing’s new era starts this weekend.

For the first time in the team’s history, Christian Horner will not preside as team principal from the pit wall.

The Englishman, steward of all 14 of the team’s championship, was sacked two weeks ago. In his place steps Laurent Mekies, the former Racing Bulls boss.

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Mekies is a different character with a wildly different background. An engineer by trade, Red Bull Racing will seek a new tack with his hand on the tiller.

And it certainly needs a new direction.

Red Bull Racing remains among F1’s frontrunning group, but it’s an uninspiring fourth among them and has bleak prospects for the rest of the season.

Key staff have left. Max Verstappen is contemplating leaving. There are rumours of new rifts tearing through the factory.

Rare are revolutions neat and tidy, but in one of Red Bull Racing’s worst seasons on record, things could yet get worse before they get better.

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HOW BAD IS THIS SEASON?

Despite Verstappen’s victories in Japan and Emilia-Romagna, the 2025 season is on track to be among the very worst of Red Bull Racing’s race-winning era dating back to 2009.

After 12 rounds the team is fourth in the standings with just 172 points. It’s not just being belted by McLaren but being soundly beaten by the wobbly Ferrari and inconsistent Mercedes teams.

Putting its score to date in the context of its history is instructive.

Red Bull Racing’s worst championship position after 12 rounds

2015: 4th (113 points, 0 wins)

2025: 4th (172 points, 2 wins)

2017: 3rd (199 points, 1 win)

2018: 3rd (223 points, 3 wins)

2019: 3rd (244 points, 2 wins)

2020: 2nd (226 points, 1 win)

2014: 2nd (254 points, 3 wins)

2009: 2nd (104.5 points, 3 wins)*

2016: 2nd (256 points, 1 win)

2021: 2nd (303.5 points, 7 wins)

2012: 1st (272 points, 3 wins)

2010: 1st (312 points, 6 wins)

2013: 1st (352 points, 6 wins)

2024: 1st (373 points, 7 wins)

2022: 1st (396 points, 8 wins)

2011: 1st (426 points, 7 wins)

2023: 1st (503 points, 12 wins)

*2009 scored using previous points schedule. Tally would have been 255 points using today’s schedule.

Red Bull sack Horner as team pricipal | 00:50

Let’s assume Red Bull Racing doubles its score by the end of the year, moving from 172 points to 344 points.

It would still be the second-worst season on record during this period.

The only worse year would have been 2015, when RBR limped through the year with just three podiums, but dire engine unreliability was key that result. The team racked up four failures to finish, one failure to start and six non-scoring classifications.

Engine reliability and performance were so bad that year that Red Bull Racing attempted to cancel its supply agreement with Renault, which it eventually managed three years later with a switch to Honda.

The team returned fewer points in 2020, but that year ran to only 17 rounds due to the pandemic, and if you pro rata the score, 2025 is on track to be comfortably worse.

There are important distinctions to make between this year and those only marginally better in the 12-round ranking above.

Red Bull Racing scored 27 more points by this stage in the season in 2017, but it had also recorded nine DNFs between its two cars. Things were marginally better in the next season on the list, 2018, with seven retirements. Renault’s power units played a significant role in both.

So far this year the team has suffered only three failures to finish, all of which were due to collision damage.

In other words, there’s no way to escape the poor tidings of 2025.

The above puts the season and Horner’s dismissal into a new light.

Whereas in 2015 he was still basking in the glow of four successive double championships and Renault’s unreliable motor was an obvious culprit for the sudden downturn, no such excuses exist this year.

The team was already in decline last year, with only Verstappen’s driving powering him to the title in a car that by the end of the season was behind both Ferrari and McLaren.

And its power unit is the same one that has powered Verstappen to all four of his drivers championships and the team’s last two constructors crowns — and the rules have been stable since 2021.

Statistically it’s set to be Red Bull Racing’s worst season in a decade and its second worst campaign since it started winning races in 2009.

But you could argue this result is the most devastating of the lot in context.

Marquez makes it five wins on the bounce | 00:55

END OF AN ERA

That’s all important to keep in mind when we consider the position in which the team finds itself.

With Horner’s dismissal, Red Bull has willingly ended one era and launched another.

It’s not simply that Horner is gone.

Reports suggest one of the many reasons for the Englishman’s sacking was the way he had concentrated control of the brand’s F1 operations in his hands.

The Austrian business and its executives are tipped to unpick some of that, reabsorbing the Formula 1 team so that it’s treated it as another one of its various worldwide sporting interests rather than a fiefdom of its principal.

It’s a more significant change than a simple swap of team principals; it’s a philosophical departure.

But sudden significant changes are rarely smooth.

There are some rumblings that the move has opened new divisions inside Milton Keynes based on loyalty to Horner, the only team principal in Red Bull Racing’s history. Anyone hired by the team in the last 20 years will have answered to the Briton as their ultimate boss. Some senior staff will owe their positions to him directly.

For example, the Horner news was followed quickly by the dismissal of group chief marketing and commercial officer Oliver Hughes and group director of communications Paul Smith. Both were seen as Horner men in roles that were too broad for the new structure being imposed on the team from Austria.

Now the UK Sun has claimed others are threatening to quit, dismayed by the team’s new direction.

The paper anonymously cites staff claiming that Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has instructed employees to “smile more” and that Red Bull chief executive Oliver Mintzlaff laughed about some no longer having line managers to report to.

It further cites an unnamed family friend who claims without evidence Horner was sacked because he was British, though this accusation makes little sense considering Red Bull Racing operates in England and is dominated by British staff.

Nonetheless, there must be uncertainty over the team’s new direction and, if nothing else, its state of competitiveness. To have lost the thread of its 2023 domination so quickly — really in just months — raises some significant questions.

Of course Verstappen seems to think as much as well given his talks with Mercedes.

There’s therefore a limited time to get the wheels turning on this new era.

Feeney storms to tenth win of the season | 01:30

PROGRESS IS PARAMOUNT

There’s much still at stake in 2025, even if Horner’s sudden sacking reads like a tacit writing off of the year.

Horner himself represents a potential ticking time bomb.

If loyalty to him is as strong as some claim — an undoubtedly it is among some members of staff — his next move, if it’s to head up another team, could trigger another Milton Keynes brain drain, with staff following him to his next destination.

Some will be considering their future with the team owing to the instability regardless of whether they had any affection for Horner’s leadership.

It will be important to steady the ship quickly enough to head off this threat.

The most influential way the team can project stability and optimism is through Verstappen.

His threat to quit early last year in defence of Helmut Marko had the effect of the Austrian immediately being guaranteed his job.

His talks this year with Mercedes about a possible defection — as revealed by George Russell and confirmed by Toto Wolff — were one element in the case that ultimately had Horner dismissed.

If he can be convinced to stay — if he can be convinced the team’s future is brighter than it seems — the bleeding might be stemmed.

“We have to show Max that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” motorsport adviser Helmut Marko said, per Auto Motor und Sport.

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

Light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t mean roaring back into championship contention this year — that boat has long sailed.

At 69 points adrift, Verstappen would need one of the biggest comebacks of all time to beat title leader Oscar Piastri, and he’d need to do so in a car that’s clearly inferior to the McLaren. The fact Lando Norris is also in the mix only eight points behind Piastri makes the task only more improbable.

Red Bull Racing is also way out of constructors championship contention, trailing McLaren by 288 points.

Second place might still be on the table, with 50 points separating Ferrari in second from Red Bull Racing in fourth.

However, that would require Yuki Tsunoda scoring regularly, something that has proved beyond driver and team.

Unlike in some other sports, there’s not really such a thing as a new-manager bounce in motorsport. Formula 1 is too complex a sport for a single person to make a significant difference from one weekend to the next.

However, Mekies unlocking more pace from Tsunoda this year would be an important win for the new boss and his new approach.

And given a new approach is what the team needs, it could be crucial to holding onto Verstappen and keeping the team together.

Lando hurt while trying to celebrate | 00:30

It’s been suggested that Mekies’s arrival has increased the likelihood that Verstappen will stick with the team next season.

That was always the more likely outcome anyway. With so much change to next year’s regulations, betting on a team swap was always fraught; a driver of Verstappen’s cache can afford to wait a season, assess the competitive situation and then take his pick among the title-contending constructors.

Much, therefore, likely rides on the team’s performance next season. It’s assumed that if Red Bull Racing slips down the order in 2026, Verstappen will leave.

Ironically that means Verstappen’s fate is still largely tied to Horner — tied to the success of the structures and programs the Englishman put in place for the new rules.

Arriving barely six months before the first pre-season test, Mekies has little scope to influence next year’s early form.

But even if the team were to underperform in 2026, there might be scope to retain the Dutchman.

Verstappen has talked often about wanting nothing more than a peaceful, harmonious and focused workplace. Red Bull Racing has been anything but this since the beginning of last year.

If Mekies can harmonise the team in the second half of the year — if he can prove Red Bull Racing can be made efficient and nimble again — it might appeal to Verstappen’s sense of loyalty.

The Dutchman has intimated that he would like to be a Red Bull Racing driver for life. If the team isn’t far off the pace but can demonstrate that it’s moving in the right direction, he might be convinced to stay and contribute to the rebuild.

And if he can be convinced of Red Bull Racing’s credentials, so too can the staff who might be thinking of leaving. More of the team can be left intact, and the Mekies era can start from a higher base.

Things might have to get worse before they get better, but rock bottom can be left undiscovered.

The shape of Red Bull Racing’s new era will be formed from this weekend.