Red Bull Racing should be deep in optimistic preparations to defend its dominant 2023 championship this week. Instead the beginnings of its 2024 season have been mired in controversy.
An allegation of inappropriate behaviour levied against team principal Christian Horner has overshadowed his squad’s off-season and derailed Formula 1’s 2024 prologue just as the sport begins to draw up the curtains on another season.
The accusation has been escalated from the team in Milton Keynes to the Red Bull parent company in Austria, a sign of the seriousness with which it’s being treated. An external investigator — a British King’s Counsel — is inquiring into the matter.
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Though no details have been officially made public, reports suggest Horner has been accused of “controlling” workplace behaviour by a female employee.
Horner strongly denies the allegations.
Despite the 50-year-old being grilled for eight hours on Friday in London, no deadline has been set for the matter’s resolution.
It puts the entire saga at risk of being dragged not only through Red Bull Racing’s season launch — scheduled for this Thursday, 15 February — but into pre-season testing and potentially the opening rounds of the year.
It also creates a far greater risk of Red Bull Racing’s dirty laundry being aired in public.
While the allegations against the long-time team boss must be taken seriously in their own right, there’s no denying the background of political tension inside the team.
Regardless of the investigation’s outcome, rumours of friction among management figures won’t disappear quietly.
RED BULL RACING IN A POWER VACUUM
Red Bull Racing was established in 2005 by energy drinks magnate Dietrich Mateschitz as part of the Austrian brand’s extreme sports marketing strategy. Sister team Toro Rosso was inaugurated the following year.
The power of Mateschitz’s personality was the glue that held the operation together. Though control was exercised through adviser Helmut Marko and via respective team principals Horner and Franz Tost, there was never any doubt that the buck stopped with the Austrian tycoon.
It’s why serious questions were asked about Red Bull’s involvement in Formula 1 when Mateschitz died in October 2022.
Status quo was maintained at the ownership level, where Dietrich’s son Mark inherited his 49 per cent stake in the company, complementing the 51 per cent share held by Chalerm Yoovidhya, son of Chaleo Yoovidhya, the Thai inventor of the original Red Bull recipe.
But shifts at management level appear to have triggered a squabble for total control.
Oliver Mintzlaff, the former football CEO who oversaw RB Leipzig’s elevation to Germany’s premier league, was appointed CEO of corporate projects and new investments, which oversees Red Bull’s F1 operations.
With a new man calling the shots from Salzburg, the balance of power was suddenly up for grabs.
In one corner was Marko, who has long been the conduit between Red Bull and its Formula 1 teams. Though he’s one of two Red Bull Racing board directors, he’s employed by the Austrian parent company and thus sits above the F1 team in the hierarchy.
In the other corner is Horner, the championship-winning team principal who turned Red Bull’s massive investment into title trophies. He’s Red Bull Racing’s only other board director and is also its CEO.
The rumblings started midway through last season, and by October reports were surfacing of a skirmish between the two power players.
Germany’s Auto Bild reported that Horner had spent the year ingratiating himself with majority shareholder Yoovidhya to secure himself in lieu of losing Mateschitz’s influence. It further reported that the Horner camp was placing stories in the English media suggesting Marko no longer had the confidence of the business.
Marko, on the other hand, had reportedly won the backing of German-speaking Mintzlaff in his defence. Earlier this year Marko told the Austria Press Agency that his Red Bull consultancy deal had been extended from the end of 2024 through to the end of 2026. He will reportedly attend all 24 grands prix this season — hardly the sort of move you’d expect for an employee out of favour with the business nor the behaviour of a man backing down from a fight.
Both Horner and Marko were forced to deny rumours of a rift between them late last year, but while Horner batted away reports as being the sort of thing that comes with the vacuum of news after a championship is wrapped up early, Marko’s response was less definitive.
“I have a contract until the end of 2024 and in the end it’s the shareholders’ decision, not Christian Horner’s, and in the end it’s me who decides,” he told Motorsport Total.
BATTLE LINES DRAWN
With two titans of Red Bull’s F1 program apparently in conflict, it’s no surprise battle lines are being drawn.
Both men can count loyal allies among the title-winning team.
In October, when the rivalry appeared to be coming to a head, Auto Bild reported that newly minted three-time champion Max Verstappen had thrown his weight behind Marko.
The Austrian was instrumental in bringing Verstappen into Formula 1. His audacious plan to beat Mercedes to his services was based on the improbable plan to give him his F1 debut at 17 years old. With just one year of car racing under his belt, Mercedes was willing only to put the prodigiously talented Dutchman into its junior program on the long road to Formula 1.
Marko was subsequently a key player in elevating Verstappen from Toro Rosso to Red Bull Racing after just four rounds of the 2016 season.
Verstappen’s voice obviously carries weight. Not only is he F1’s central protagonist with a long-term contract in his pocket, but Red Bull’s junior driver pipeline has no obvious like-for-like replacement ready to take over if the entire situation were to go nuclear and the Dutchman were to walk.
Horner, meanwhile, is said to count the legendary Adrian Newey in his corner, with the pair having long been rumoured to have linked contracts that would allow one to exit the team if the other were to leave.
Newey is Red Bull Racing’s chief technical officer and widely considered the most successful designer in Formula 1 history, with 12 constructors championships and 13 drivers titles won with cars of his making at Williams, McLaren and Red Bull Racing.
His defection from McLaren to Red Bull Racing for the 2006 season was sensational, leaving one of motorsport’s grandees to join a squad most of the paddock considered to lack seriousness thanks to its self-styled disrupter status.
The masterstroke was Horner’s signature signing in his first season as an F1 team boss, and it was central to Red Bull Racing ascending to title contention in 2009 and to its first championship double with Sebastian Vettel in 2010.
Horner and Newey have been fundamental to the team continuing through its fallow years to rise again in 2021 and dominated since 2022.
WHAT IS RED BULL RACING WITHOUT CHRISTIAN HORNER?
It leaves Red Bull Racing at a crossroads dissecting its most important factions. While it’s difficult to predict what might happen next, it’s hard to imagine the status quo prevailing harmoniously.
The political spat has become a battle for Red Bull Racing’s soul.
That’s no understatement. While the Red Bull brand is paramount, Red Bull Racing is the team that Horner built.
He was handed the reins of the former struggling Jaguar team and turned it into a formidable force. While Red Bull’s vast financial resources obviously aided his way, it was his nous and instinct that pulled together the right pieces to form a winning machine.
It necessarily meant that Milton Keynes was built around him. In an era of increasingly corporate employee principals, Horner stands almost entirely alone as an old-school boss who rules by the force of his personality.
Only Toto Wolff at Mercedes could claim to have a similar level of personal buy-in, being a part-owner of Mercedes, though he arrived at a team that already had all its key parts in place.
And yet rumours continue to rumble that Horner is more likely than not to struggle to hold onto his position.
Germany’s Motorsport Total reported that Horner was asked to “voluntarily resign” last week but had declined.
F1 Insider — which along with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf broke the story of the allegations against Horner — has since reported that Newey has given assurances to the team that he would stay on as chief technical officer even without Horner in the team principal role.
The German publication has further reported that sporting director Jonathan Wheatley could be in line to take over from an ousted Horner.
On the other hand, Britain’s Times has reported that Mintzlaff himself could end up overseeing the team.
It paints a picture of what appears to be an increasingly politically isolated Horner. At a minimum it suggests the political atmosphere is extremely febrile. Very rare is there smoke with no fire in Formula 1.
If Horner were to be removed — either by an adverse finding in his investigation or as a consequence of internal power plays — Red Bull Racing would be changed irrevocably.
That such upheaval could come right at the time that the team should be pressing home its competitive on-track advantage shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.
RBR is perfectly placed to sweep up the next pair of driver-constructor title doubles before the change of rules in 2026, but political machinations to spill management positions is exactly the sort of thing that could derail what otherwise appears to be an unstoppable freight train of momentum.
Suddenly Red Bull Racing looks vulnerable at the top of Formula 1.
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