Red Bull team boss Christian Horner says he and Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff are the last of the “dinosaur” leaders on the grid.
Alongside AlphaTauri’s Franz Tost, Horner is the longest-serving Team Principal in the field, having taken the position at the helm of Red Bull in 2005.
However, Tost will step down from his team boss role at the end of the year and will be replaced by Laurent Mekies, who joins from Ferrari.
With Wolff also leading the Mercedes team for over 10 years, Horner believes that the duo are the final examples of a certain style of F1 boss.
“When I look around the room now, there’s very different personalities,” Horner told the Unlapped podcast.
“When I first came into the sport, there was Ron Dennis, there was Flavio Briatore, there was Eddie Jordan, there was Jean Todt.
“There was Bernie Ecclestone running it, there was Max Mosley there, Frank Williams – some really big characters and personalities.
“Of course now you look around the room – maybe it’s just me getting older – but there’s more managers there and it’s gotten much more technical than the entrepreneurial side.
“So I suppose Toto [Wolff] and myself are perhaps two of the more ‘dinosaur’ type of characters compared to some. Even though I’m still on the younger side of the Team Principals.
“But the dynamic and the definition of what a Team Principal is these days is very different to when I first came into this post.”
Horner and Wolff endured a public rivalry during the 2021 season, when Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton went head-to-head for the title.
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