Illustration by Andy Bunday<\/p>\n
Is Christian Horner the most divisive character Formula One motor racing has ever seen? When he finally left the Red Bull team this week, his departure felt like the culmination of a\u00a0long goodbye. Known to millions of viewers for his appearances on the Netflix F1 docuseries Drive to Survive, the 51-year-old former team principal was axed shortly after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July, and divested of his Red Bull director duties in\u00a0mid-August.<\/p>\n
Allegations of \u201cinappropriate behaviour\u201d and \u201ccoercion<\/a>\u201d involving texts between Horner and a\u00a0female colleague (now working on another team) were made public last year. Lead Red Bull driver Max\u00a0Verstappen\u2019s father, Jos, with whom Horner had a\u00a0fraught relationship, wanted him removed<\/a>. However, I\u2019m told this may have been less significant than other factors: the complex power struggle with Austrian parent company Red Bull GmbH, the loss of key personnel including designer Adrian Newey, and the decline in form with McLaren overtaking Red\u00a0Bull as the dominant F1 team.<\/p>\n Horner\u2019s severance package is reported to be around \u00a380m (although some close to the action reckon it\u2019s more like \u00a360m): a lot, even for a sport as wealthy as F1. But then, Horner was with Red Bull since its inception. At 31 he was the youngest team principal, he was paid \u00a310m a year, and he had a contract running until 2030<\/a>. He also succeeded against the odds. As the sports writer George Simms tells me: \u201cHorner was in the era when it was just Mercedes and [driver] Lewis Hamilton winning everything year after year, and everyone was just bored of it.\u201d Over his two decades in charge, Horner shattered Mercedes\u2019 dominance, leading Red Bull to eight Drivers\u2019 Championships and six Constructors\u2019 Championships as well as 124 race victories.<\/p>\n There is talk of Horner and his wife, Geri Halliwell, taking a belated honeymoon<\/p>\n Regarding the text scandal, Horner denied the behaviour, and was twice cleared<\/a>, but the optics were excruciating. Horner, with his strained-looking wife of 10 years, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, F1\u2019s starriest \u2013 and sometimes smuggest-looking \u2013 celebrity power couple were brought low: reduced to patrolling the paddocks, hands clutched in a grim display of unity.<\/p>\n Having met Geri myself (years ago, post-Spice Girls), I was reminded of how fiercely protective \u2013 verging on paranoid \u2013 she seemed about her privacy: so one presumes the scandal was torture for her. Even the F1 co-founder Bernie Ecclestone, a staunch Horner ally, is quoted as despairing of it. \u201cHe was just an idiot,\u201d Ecclestone said: \u201cHe was a 50-year-old man who thought he was 20<\/a>, thought he was one of the boys.\u201d Ecclestone also thought Horner was generally perceived as \u201cgetting away with things\u201d.<\/p>\n Is there truth in this? Certainly, ego seemed to feature<\/a> in Horner\u2019s rise and fall. Red Bull\u2019s Helmut Marko observed the team had become \u201cmore \u2018Christian Horner\u2019 than \u2018Red Bull racing\u2019\u201d. Professionally, Horner first competed in the Formula-racing junior leagues before launching the team Arden and helming Red Bull, formerly Jaguar \u2013 his appointment supported by Ecclestone. As far as his personal life<\/a> goes, he was raised in Warwickshire and had a child with his first wife, Beverley Allen, who sadly recently passed away. He has another child with Geri, whose daughter he also adopted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to discuss Horner without talking about Drive to Survive: their success seems conjoined. The fly-on-the-wall, paddock-based soap opera is credited with sparking the global surge of interest in F1, pulling in swaths of younger fans \u2013 and female ones. Critically, it also enthralled the US, which now hosts three Grand Prix races: in Austin, Texas; Miami, Florida; and Las Vegas, Nevada.<\/p>\n Horner bemoaned being \u201cat the mercy of the producer\u2019s script\u201d, but he was the breakout star \u2013 Drive to Survive\u2019s ruthless, acerbic answer to Simon Cowell. Simms credits him with helping to modernise the concept of motorsport for TV audiences, saying: \u201cHe understood what Formula One was \u2013 that it\u2019s an entertainment product rather than a hard-nosed sport. To a\u00a0certain extent, he was playing a\u00a0character, but he knew what that character needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Drive to Survive is where Horner\u2019s rivalries with other team principals played out, including: a\u00a0quasi-pantomime with Mercedes\u2019 Toto Wolff. But there was something more vehement with McLaren\u2019s Zak Brown, the latter speaking pointedly recently of the \u201chealthier\u201d atmosphere<\/a> in the paddocks since Horner\u2019s departure. Horner also fostered an upstart\/underdog\/punk identity for Red Bull, repeatedly pointing out that it was \u201ca\u00a0subsidiary of an energy drinks company\u201d up against established automotive companies \u2013 though this seemed less credible the more successful Red Bull became.<\/p>\n Controlling as his reputation can be \u2013 one person describes him to me as \u201cself-important, bordering on maniacal\u201d \u2013 Horner was known to be devoted to Red\u00a0Bull, serving as team principal, coach, driver-manager, strategist and more. According to those I spoke to, Horner was reputed never to miss a race, and was uncommonly approachable for the\u00a0media.<\/p>\n Did all this history and graft, combined with the global impact of Drive to Survive, make Horner feel invincible \u2013 so quintessentially \u201cRed Bull\u201d that it would be inconceivable to\u00a0unseat him? If so, he was mistaken. Horner\u2019s replacement, Laurent Mekies, has already secured victories at the Italian and Azerbaijan Grands Prix.<\/p>\n What comes next for the forcibly pit-stopped Horner? There is talk of the Horners taking a late honeymoon in\u00a0Scotland<\/a>. Horner once said: \u201cFamily time is the biggest thing that keeps my feet on the ground.\u201d But he has also said: \u201cWinning is addictive.\u201d<\/p>\n One key facet of Horner\u2019s exit package was the shortening of \u201cgardening leave<\/a>\u201d, which would allow his return back into F1 before the second half of the 2026 season. As is the way with these things, rumours swirl: from Horner forming a consortium to purchase Alpine with his friend Flavio Briatore to his taking over at Ferrari<\/a>, Aston Martin or \u2026 who knows? This time Horner is said to be seeking equity \u2013 a stake in a company, similar to Wolff\u2019s deal with Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the meantime, it could be that his singularly forceful presence is missed at the paddocks \u2013 at least by\u00a0Netflix.<\/p>\n Alma mater<\/b> Warwick School<\/p>\n Work<\/b> Former Red Bull F1 team principal<\/p>\n Family<\/b> Married with three children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illustration by Andy Bunday Is Christian Horner the most divisive character Formula One motor racing has ever seen?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-462235","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\/115291509555056624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462235","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=462235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}