Christian Horner has been removed as CEO and team boss of the Red Bull Racing team with immediate effect. Laurent Mekies, team boss of Racing Bulls, has now been named as the new Red Bull boss.
“Red Bull has released Christian Horner from his operational duties with effect from today and has appointed Laurent Mekies as CEO of Red Bull Racing,” a Red Bull spokesperson confirmed to Autosport. “Oliver Mintzlaff, CEO Corporate Projects and Investments thanked Christian Horner for his exceptional work over the last 20 years.”
“We would like to thank Christian Horner for his exceptional work over the last 20 years,” said Oliver Mintzlaff, CEO Corporate Projects and Investments.
“With his tireless commitment, experience, expertise and innovative thinking, he has been instrumental in establishing Red Bull Racing as one of the most successful and attractive teams in Formula 1. Thank you for everything, Christian, and you will forever remain an important part of our team history.”
I’ve been a staunch defender of Red Bull during their tenure in F1 as fans hated the domination of the Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen years, told them to pack their bags and leave when the team were struggling with Renault and I even supported them when there was all of the drama in the past two years.
Red Bull are a huge part of F1 and spend enormous amounts of money injected into he series and they are a privateer no less. The 2026 season will see them launch their own power unit in another huge commitment to the sport.
As we’ve said on the podcast, things have never been the same since Dietrich Mateschitz passed and the alleged inappropriate behavior controversy last year didn’t help things much. The current rumors that Max Verstappen could leave for Mercedes won’t help the situation and we know how Max’s father feels about Christian. In the end, this is reminiscent of the boardroom power struggle at McLaren when the board ousted Ron Dennis. So too, the board has ousted Christian Horner from the team he built, just s Ron had at McLaren.
I’ve not been bashful about suggesting that when a team does poorly, you can’t fire the entire team, you have to fire the team boss and look for change. I advocated a change at Haas two years prior to it actually happening.
There’s one small problem with that in this case. Christian knows how to win titles and he’s won eight Driver’s Championships and six Constructor’s Championships. Teams ebb and flow but Christian manages to win and its that very detail about the man that could find him at a team like Ferrari as it is clear there are rumors of displeasure with Fred Vasseur.
Ferrari have invested heavily in Lewis Hamilton and it isn’t bearing fruit so they may be interested in a change.
One final thought, there could be a major Verstappen element to this decision. Max is arguably one of the best to ever drive in F1 and we know that Max’s father has been very vocal of his disdain for Horner. The relationship between Max and Christian has been strained. If part of Max’s willingness to stay at Red Bull is centered around Horner’s departure, then the team may have made the move to retain Max. Given the timing, I suspect this may be a large part of it.
I’ve been a defender of Christian for a long time and while he isn’t perfect, he is a winner and he knows how to win so I suspect we may not have seen the last of Christian in motorsport. His detractors may want to pause on their plans to dance about on his F1 grave.
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Ferrari, Alpine or Aston Martin? Would any of these places make sense for him? AM would but not sure how Newey would feel about that. Alpine makes sense. He and Flav are friends.
Ferrari possibly, Aston Martin I doubt as Newey won’t like it and Alpine is currently a poisoned chalice.
However, Szafnauer has been sniffing around and openly talked about buying a team should one come up (ie Alpine). So maybe if that sale goes through, Horner could return there.
I see a few other key personnel that Horner put in place, were also ‘let go’.
The vultures are going to start circling, if I was Ferrari, I’d be on the phone to Hannah Schmidt asap.
Wasn’t there a story over last winter about Horner being offered a role at Ferrari? As I recall, he turned them down.
Flabio could do worse than offer Horner the Alpine job. After all, they are in a similar position to Red Bull when they took over the Jaguar team. Horner knows what it takes to drag a team up to the front.
Yeah, they offered him the job and he told them he wasn’t interested and that they should move Vasseur up, which they did.
What a can of worms has been opened here! It’s going to be fun to watch. My take is that it’s not going to change much at RBR, the problem is that the car design has gone too far down the road of making it so pointy for Max, that it’s now undriveable. Plus, all teams have a cycle of dominance and RBR is on the way down, several key personnel have left (Newey, Wheatly,Marshall), and bad design choices etc. I suspect that Max will stay for 2026 and see how the car is compared to everybody else and then… Read more »
Sorry, Todd;
I accidentally bumped the single star and screwed up your rating average which you know would be top tier from me. ☺️
Gave it a five star to help lessen your burden ^_^
So now Christian can go to Ferrari with Hamilton and Max can go to Mercedes with Toto? Anyone else want this desperately? haha