Motorsport Week asks whether Christian Horner’s exit from the Red Bull Formula 1 team was perhaps an inevitability that would come sooner rather than later.
Christian Horner’s relationship with Red Bull had started to feel a bit like a romantic relationship that is starting to go nowhere.
You know that something is up, and even though you don’t think it’ll ever end, but when it does, there is a feeling of numbness, confirming that, subconsciously, you had already mourned for its conclusion.
And for Horner, the gut-wrenching reality of seeing your now ex-partner cosying up with someone else will surely hit home.
That is once he catches sight of the flowing grey locks of Laurent Mekies, clad in Red Bull team wear, occupying the seat on the pit wall upon which he was perched for 20 years.
Many will talk about what the real reasons are, given the personal allegations about Horner sprung to light early last year, and perhaps those will come out in the wash one day, one way or the other.
But there are sporting elements to this also, indirectly relating to the former issues and ones that have solely been prominent in the months since.
The second seat ‘curse’ that needed more than lucky heather
It has seemed that ever since the moment Daniel Ricciardo ploughed into the rear end of Max Verstappen in Baku back in 2018, the second seat at the team has been little more than a poisoned chalice, which countless drivers have sipped from, their careers never truly recovering.
In truth, the problem stems earlier than that. Sebastian Vettel’s and Mark Webber’s intense intra-team rivalry often made the Australian feel shunted sideways.
But once Ricciardo had started to feel a similar twinge of enforced inferiority, he slinked off to Renault, and both Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon came and went, seemingly failing to prove enough and were sent away with their tails between their diffusers.
It was then that Red Bull went against the grain of its usual in-house hiring policy and plucked Sergio Perez out of potential F1 wilderness.
The Mexican was on his way out of Racing Point as it transitioned into Aston Martin, and having become a reliable and experienced driver after some exciting yet limp-minded driving in his youth, it was a smart idea to sign him up.
Perez’s move came at the right time, as the car for the 2021 season was good enough for Max Verstappen to challenge for the title, and it was good enough for Perez to play an important support role as the Dutchman eventually claimed the title from the sweaty palms of Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi.
And after two more good years with the team, helping it claim back-to-back Constructors’ titles, 2024 saw the curse go from being lifted to being back like a shadow lurking in the corner of Perez’s garage.
The reality was that the RB20 was a difficult car to handle in comparison to its predecessors, and only Verstappen’s other-worldly brilliance was what took him to a fourth straight Drivers’ crown.
And despite being confirmed for 2025, Perez, was, at great expense to the team, out on his ear.
The taste that tickled both Horner and Helmut Marko’s taste buds was the new flavour of the month: Liam Lawson.
The Kiwi had made a number of decent performances deputising for Ricciardo at the sister team RB, and he was deemed ready for the exciting but unenviable task.
Two races in, two Q1 exits and no points. Lawson had left Milton Keynes as fast as he had entered it.
Now, finally, it was Yuki Tsunoda’s chance.
10 races in for the Japanese, and often unable to get no closer than two tenths to Verstappen over one lap, there has a been number of results outside the top 10.
Unless you possess Nostradamus-like powers, it’s hard to know whether Perez would have made any better of the RB21, but when two drivers have only managed less than 10 World Championship points by the halfway mark of the season, it’s a question worth asking.
High-profile departures triggered a seemingly rudderless ship
Whilst it has not been and nor will it ever be likely to be confirmed one way or the other, since the allegations against Horner came to light in early 2024 were all followed by a series of high-profile departures from the team.
Horner has, of course, been its off-track front man, and Vettel and Verstappen have been those who have taken the team to the greatest heights, there have been a great number of people pulling strings behind the scenes.
And now, a most have all gone, all within a short space of time.
The first was Rob Marshall, who had been another original member of the team, working under Adrian Newey in the design department.
He sought pastures new and did so with McLaren, becoming first its Technical Director, then its Chief Designer. His work has seen the team propel itself back into the top, winning last year’s Constructors’ Championship, and now his MCL39 set to sweep the board across both championships this year.
Next came Lee Stevenson, chief mechanic to Max Verstappen. Not as big a name as some of the other departees from the team, but another pivotal member was to go.
In April last year, he jumped ship to Sauber, taking up a similar role. The Swiss squad then got another member of the Red Bull family.
Jonathan Wheatley, a member of the team since 2006, firstly as Team Manager and then Sporting Director, announced he too would switch to Hinwil in August, to becoming its Team Principal as it transitions into the Audi works project.
And, of course, there is perhaps the most crucial and certainly the best-known of them all: Adrian Newey.
A multiple-World Championship-winning designer the Williams and then McLaren, Newey was lured to Milton Keynes for its second season, and continued to grow his compendium of achievements.
Newey’s involvement in Red Bull has no doubt been one of the biggest cornerstones of his success, and with his departure being announced the same month as Stevenson’s, the ripples were now starting to show.
And finally, its Head of Strategy, Will Courtney, was next to leave, announcing that he would join Marshall at McLaren, further enhancing its own growth of successful personnel as it hopes to build on its newfound rediscovery for success.
Thus completes a long run of, in the nicest possible way, rats leaving a sinking ship. And with what now is possibly a last-ditch attempt to convince Verstappen to stay in a bid to keep the Red Bull ship afloat, an order from above has come to ensure Horner, its captain, gets pushed over the edge of the deck.
It remains to be seen whether Mekies will be able to steer it to starboard to safety, but what is for certain is that Red Bull faces some choppy waters.
READ MORE – The hint that Red Bull F1 dismissal arrived as a surprise to Christian Horner
