Formula 1 team principals are unlikely to follow in the footsteps of the drivers and sit down for a meal together, according to Christian Horner.
All 20 races on the grid met at a restaurant in Abu Dhabi last month, ahead of the season finale. The meal, organised and paid for by Lewis Hamilton, was to say goodbye to four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel ahead of his final F1 race.
Much was made of that show of friendship between the drivers, not least by a number of former F1 stars. 1996 world champion Damon Hill was one of several to suggest that there was no way the drivers would have got along so well during his time on the grid.
Speaking at a Q&A during a PokerStars charity event at Red Bull's Milton Keynes base, at which Mirror Sport was in attendance, Horner was asked if the team principals might follow the lead of the drivers. But he replied with a chuckle: "Unfortunately, the same amount of love isn't shared around the team principals, as the drivers."
Team principals have been known to meet for meals in the past. One of the most recent examples was early in the 2022 season, when they all sat down for dinner together at the invitation of F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali – a photo from that evening showed Horner and his Mercedes rival Toto Wolff keeping their distance from each other.
And Wolff revealed last year that he had invited his fellow team bosses to dinner in the past, but stopped doing so after some started "slagging each other off" at the table. "They all started fighting with each other so it was pretty unpleasant," said the Austrian.
Referring to the drivers' dinner in Abu Dhabi, Horner went on to crack a joke about Red Bull driver Max Verstappen. The double F1 world champion, he joked, had shown a few signs in the final weeks of the season that he had been indulging himself at such events.
Horner said: "Of course Max, having won the drivers' and the constructors' championships with a couple of races to go – they're a little bit like jockeys where they have to come in under a certain weight, and we saw that weight starting to creep up a little, through the steakhouses in Austin and the taquerias in Brazil."
But he then added: "He'll be back on weight, I'm sure, by the time he gets back in the car in February next year."
