Although Red Bull swept Bahrain with a double in the first race of the World Cup, and that the superiority of the red buffalo predicts a placid championship towards Max Verstappen’s fourth consecutive title, the team from Milton Keynes is a powder keg ready to exploit
The trigger for the crisis that has erupted in the energetic team was the accusation of alleged “inappropriate behavior” by Christian Horner (50) with a team employee. After an internal investigation, on Wednesday, two days before the start of the Bahrain GP, ??Red Bull communicated that its director was acquitted and that he remained in his position.
Far from closing the matter, the conflict escalated on Thursday night, with two anonymous emails reaching around 100 recipients, including the presidents of the FIA ??and F-1, as well as directors of equipment and media. That massive shipment included a dossier with 79 files that would compromise Horner due to the appearance of WhatsApp messages and images he would have sent to the employee. “I can’t sleep, can I call you?”, he would have asked in one of the messages. In another, the manager of the team would have asked for photos and the employee would have replied: “Your wife wouldn’t be so happy”. Horner’s wife is ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, with whom he walked arm in arm through the Sakhir paddock on Saturday.
While the FIA ??and F-1 check the veracity of the documents, the confrontation has become evident at Red Bull to the extent that someone has tried to discredit the figure of Horner. Only someone with weight at Red Bull could have access to the internal investigation file. All eyes quickly turned to a possible sender: Jos Verstappen, the father of the triple champion, whose bad relationship with Horner is known. The director’s environment points to the Dutch parent as the leaker of the so-called “Horner leaks”.
The escalation of tension grew on Saturday night after Max’s overwhelming victory. His father, usually low-key, let loose to The Daily Mail : “There is tension here as long as he [Horner] continues in office. The team is at risk of disintegration, it cannot continue like this, it will explode. He’s making himself the victim, when he’s the one causing the problems.” A bomb that showed the fragmentation in the team and that the Verstappen are on the side that wants to force the exit of Horner, whose continuity caused discomfort and division in the team. In fact, according to the German press, the executive director of Red Bull GmbH, Oliver Mintzlaff, was “horrified by Horner’s behavior” and had already made the decision to fire him – he even had the press release ready -, but someone stopped him.
Is this war a matter of filialties and phobias between Verstappen senior and Horner? As can be deduced from the intricate interests underlying it, this would only be the crater of the volcano that has erupted. There are two theories that would explain the origin of the magma that boils in the bowels of Red Bull: the first says that it is an internal war for control and influence in the company between the Austrian side (after the death of Dietrich Mateschitz in October 2022) and its majority owner, the Thai Chalerm Yoovidhya – who explicitly supported Horner in Bahrain.
And the second, more complicated, refers to the contracts of the team managers: the high-ranking staff have clauses linked to the continuity of the English director, so Max Verstappen – with a contract until 2028 – if he wanted to go – If he were to improve his conditions, he would be freed from Horner’s anchor and thus would be a free agent. That’s why Verstappen father has started the machinery… and he even meets face-to-face with Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes, in the paddock in Bahrain, and lets himself be loved.
