{"id":314549,"date":"2025-08-03T12:58:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T12:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/314549\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T12:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T12:58:15","slug":"mclaren-chief-says-formula-one-is-healthier-without-christian-horner-christian-horner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/314549\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren chief says Formula One is \u2018healthier\u2019 without Christian Horner | Christian Horner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The McLaren chief, Zak Brown, has claimed Formula One enjoys a \u201chealthier\u201d atmosphere after the departure of Christian Horner<\/a> and accused the former Red Bull team principal of \u201ccrossing the line\u201d.<\/p>\n

Horner was released from his position after the British GP last month after 20 years in charge at Red Bull<\/a> after a long-running power struggle between the team principal and the parent company Red Bull GmbH.<\/p>\n

The last 18 months of his reign were overshadowed by an accusation from a female colleague of \u201ccoercive behaviour\u201d. Horner always denied the claim and was twice exonerated.<\/p>\n

Horner was replaced by the Racing Bulls principal, Laurent Mekies, which Brown welcomed, and revealed he had met the new man ahead of Sunday\u2019s Hungary race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy Laurent\u2019s in the role he is in,\u201d said Brown. \u201cI like Laurent, that\u2019ll be healthy, and maybe we can get back to focusing on competition on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always going to be some political aspects to the sport, but I think it is going to be healthier with Laurent. I\u2019m a fan of Laurent, I have known him for a long time, and it\u2019ll be good to go racing against him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown and Horner had repeatedly locked horns in recent years, not least earlier this season when Brown was clearly frustrated at what he believed were erroneous suggestions about the legality of the McLaren<\/a> car, which he felt had been unacceptable behaviour from Horner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went too far,\u201d said Brown. \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be politicking in F1; let\u2019s try and shut down their flexi-wings and that stuff, but when you start getting into frivolous allegations, that\u2019s just going too far.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I look up and down pit lane now, I see us fighting each other hard politically, but the line is not being crossed, and that line got crossed before. So I think that we\u2019ll see a little bit of a change for the better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a higher level of trust that now if we sit down and have a conversation on a topic where we think there could be some confidentiality, and it\u2019s just not an automatic: \u2018I\u2019m going to use that as a political weapon\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be in a better place, a little bit more unified, and a little bit more trusting that while we\u2019re fighting on track, we can have a conversation about what\u2019s good for the sport off it. And that won\u2019t get manipulated for political reasons and taken out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The McLaren chief, Zak Brown, has claimed Formula One enjoys a \u201chealthier\u201d atmosphere after the departure of Christian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-314549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114964955411812243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}