When Christian Horner took his seat at a Formula One team bosses’ meeting for the first time in 2005, barely into his 30s and a surprise appointment to head the new Red Bull team, he was stepping into a world populated by legendary figures. Sir Frank Williams, Ron Dennis of McLaren and Jean Todt of Ferrari had spent their lives fighting and winning in a deeply complex, intensely competitive and highly politicised environment.
Horner might easily have been eaten alive, like so many before him, had he not benefited from the support of a patron whose power exceeded that of all his rivals.
Bernie Ecclestone, the ringmaster of F1, had spotted his potential in the previous decade. Emulating the choice Ecclestone himself made in the 1950s, Horner had recognised the limits of his ability as a racing driver and stepped out of the cockpit to pursue a career as a team manager and organiser.
Now, when the car with which Max Verstappen hopes to win a fourth drivers’ championship in a row is rolled out during a media launch at the Red Bull headquarters scheduled for next Thursday, there is a chance, for the first time since the team was created, Horner will not be presiding over the show.
His survival as team principal appears to depend on the outcome of his meeting on Friday with an independent lawyer who will examine allegations of inappropriate and controlling behaviour levelled against him by a female employee, and which Horner denies.
He has been in fights before, but not like this one, which comes 18 months after the death of the team’s owner, the Austrian energy-drinks billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, amid rumours of rifts at the top of a team whose dominance last season was reflected in a record 21 wins from 22 races.
Horner’s early success running his own Arden Racing took him into the F3000 series, one rung down from F1, then owned by Ecclestone. When Horner’s drivers won the championship three years in a row and he became the team’s representative, Ecclestone got to know him and perhaps recognised some of his own traits.
“I used to pester the life out of him,” Horner told me when his team had won its fourth F1 title in a row with Sebastian Vettel. “And when I felt the time was right to make the move into F1, he was very supportive. He initially pushed me towards Jordan, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to be anything serious. Then Red Bull acquired Jaguar.”
Mateschitz saw sport involving speed and risk, be it air racing or Alpine skiing, as a vital promotional tool. Attracted by the idea of such a company’s wealth becoming available to F1, Ecclestone guided him towards the struggling Jaguar team whose owner, Ford, was relieved to accept a nominal $1 to be rid of it, along with potential redundancy and closure costs.
When Ecclestone mentioned the name of a young man who might run the team for him, Mateschitz was ready to take the risk. For Horner, it would mean a sudden transition from running a workforce of 20 to taking control of an operation then employing almost 500 people (now about 1,700), starting with the need to lift morale.
Horner already knew Dr Helmut Marko, Mateschitz’s compatriot and motor sport adviser, with whom the current rift – perhaps also involving Jos Verstappen, the current champion’s father – is said to have opened in recent months.
Marko is a former driver who might have become a championship contender had he not lost an eye to a flying stone during a grand prix in 1972. He and Horner competed against each other as team owners in F3000 before Marko joined Mateschitz to create Red Bull’s young driver programme, to which he has brought a ruthless readiness to cull those found wanting.
“I always enjoyed a very good relationship with Helmut,” Horner said, “even going back to when I started the Arden team and bought a second-hand trailer from him. I had no idea of who he was and what he’d done. He was this guy in Graz who I gave almost my life savings to for this second-hand car transporter. It was all done on a handshake. Then I went to his workshop and I saw the newspaper cuttings of Austrian legends: Niki Lauda, Jochen Rindt … and Helmut Marko. And I worked out who he was.”
Once installed, Horner put all his efforts into luring the star designer Adrian Newey away from McLaren. Both were born in Warwickshire and had attended the same prep school, 10 years apart. During the Monaco GP weekend Newey accepted the younger man’s invitation to a gala premiere of the film Superman Returns, that Red Bull was promoting. Over dinner afterwards they began to discuss the possibility of a move for the designer of championship-winning cars for Williams and McLaren. Five years later Vettel was winning the first of Red Bull’s seven drivers’ and six constructors’ titles.
Where once the decision on Horner’s future would have been in Mateschitz’s hands, perhaps influenced by the now-sidelined Ecclestone, today the position is less clear. Crucially, Horner and Newey are each believed to have “key man” clauses in their contracts, that would be voided by the departure of the other one.
Newey is the most successful designer in F1 history, while Horner has proved particularly adept at the publicity game. Frequently photographed at social events with his wife, Geri, a former Spice Girl, and always ready to offer his carefully aimed opinions to any available microphone or notebook, he and Mercedes’ Toto Wolff have shared the headlines with an often rancorous double act reminiscent of Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger.
Much like practically everyone in F1, but perhaps more than most, Horner has made enemies along the way. Three weeks before the start of the season in Bahrain, they will be awaiting the outcome of the lawyer’s deliberations, and its potential effect on F1’s immediate future, with more than the usual degree of interest.
