WELCOME TO THE FORMULA ONE PIRANHA CLUB
As the Netflix cameras lurk to capture the most poisonous, febrile moments... stand by for the most brazen event in history of the sport
IF Christian Horner were handed a whisky and a revolver — as many of his enemies within Red Bull wish he would be — you could be assured that a Netflix camera and a long boom would be in the room to record the gunshot.
Across the most surreal days and long nights of the weirdest grand prix of some 300 I have attended, in a febrile, poisonous atmosphere unmatched in 20 years covering the sport, the Drive to Survive crew have recorded every cough and spit and conversation, every whisper of intrigue.
That is their task as fly-on-thewall chroniclers. But this weekend, sensing rising drama, they are particularly ubiquitous.
The cameras have mostly camped outside the Red Bull motorhome, the epicentre of it all where 50-year-old Horner is fighting for his existence as the head of his riven team based in Milton Keynes. And no Formula One combustion has ever contained such a heady combination of ingredients.
Its lead component is Horner, one of the most successful and famous of team principals ever, a winner of 13 world championships since he was handpicked by a billionaire to head his new project in 2005 as a 31-year-old wonderkid. He had impressed as a manager in Formula 3000 and won approval from Bernie Ecclestone.
Outspoken, as sharp-witted as he was sharp-elbowed, he was made for F1’s so-called Piranha Club of high rollers. And in having Max Verstappen, the star driver of his time chasing a fourth world title in succession, he is in the most enviable of positions.
Yet Horner is not even the most famous person in his own marriage. That is Geri Halliwell, the former Spice Girl, whom he married in 2015. They have a son, Monty, who is seven. It may annoy Horner, or amuse him, that in newspaper headlines he is often referred to as Geri’s hubby.
Their shared fame has echoes in Formula One history: Grace Kelly brought Hollywood glamour to Monaco royalty through her marriage to Prince Rainier, and it lit the glamour of the tiny principality where the grand prix is its most famous billboard.
‘Grace was Her Serene Highness,’ as Jackie Stewart observed, ‘and that was right — she was serene.’
Times change, but there is no question that Geri’s renown has added piquancy to this weekend’s theatre. And it seems set to continue to do so. For, as Mail Sport revealed online yesterday, the former popstar has flown into Bahrain on a private jet. She touched down on Thursday night.
When she took off, the darkest clouds of her life had lifted. Horner had been cleared by the Red Bull board of ‘coercive behaviour’ towards a female colleague, a process that had started on February 5. A short statement had confirmed as much.
Throughout the investigation she stuck to her man like glue, her marriage, her life, her happiness depending on a successful resolution.
Yet when she arrived in this tiny Gulf kingdom — home to British and US naval bases, a redoubt of expats and one of the most liberal states in the region — that all changed.
Things this week have tended to happen at about 6pm local time. It was approximately then that Horner had been exonerated on Wednesday night. And when — to a thunderclap of near-incredulity — an anonymous email the following night conveyed WhatsApp messages of a sexual nature between Horner and the accused.
The email’s sender is unknown. It came from two addresses — ‘February 29’ and ‘Anonymous Reporter’. I had been down the paddock in search of news and returned to the press centre to see fellow journalists sighing, shaking heads and smiling.
They were scrolling through 79 documents containing hundreds of text messages, sometimes lewd, often racy. The exchanges read like a consensual relationship, but that was hardly any compensation to Geri, of course.
How much she knew of the content of the texts is unclear, but it is thought the evidence formed part of the Red Bull investigation, led by a KC. He conducted 60 hours of interviews and filed a 150-page report.
Geri’s friend said her fresh public humiliation on landing in Bahrain sent her into a ‘total meltdown’. Yet, according to one school of thought, she is intending to be on the grid ahead of today’s race, the first of the season, in a sensational show of solidarity.
If that happens it will be the most photographed event in Formula One history. No question about it. It will also be one of the most brazen.
The counter-theory is that she has returned home, her support withdrawn for now or for ever. A thousand cameras and the Netflix crew await the answer.
I say her appearance, and
Horner’s refusal to be budged from his £8million-a-year job, would mark ‘one’ of the most brazen acts the sport has known.
A parallel, and the only one I can think of, was undertaken by Max Mosley, son of wartime British Blackshirts leader Oswald Mosley, who when exposed for taking part in a colourful orgy faced down his critics. He successfully sued the News of
the World for invasion of privacy and stayed on as president of the governing FIA, despite the legal dispute revealing all the extravagant details of his afternoon in a west London basement.
I spoke to Ecclestone, 93 years old but still sharp, yesterday. He was in Europe and asked what the atmosphere was like in Bahrain. ‘Toxic,’ I said. ‘It reminds me of when Mosley was under pressure for his job in 2008.’
That brouhaha played out in
Bahrain, too. Mosley was banned from entering the country, and Ecclestone thought his old pal should step aside as pressure mounted from various stakeholders. Ecclestone moved to depose Mosley. He later called his temporary betrayal of his friend the only regret of his life.
I detect in Horner’s resistance a Mosley-esque stubbornness. Mosley’s future went to a vote of the FIA’s membership and he won by a landslide. Even with forces inside and outside the team ranged against him, Horner still expects to ride this out.
HOWEVER, his swagger has gone for now. He looks gaunt. Like a man in need of sleep. He is not up for banter.
This was evident when I saw him on the veranda of the Red Bull hospitality area on the morning he got here — the night after being cleared by his board, the morning of the day of the email exposure — and he called me across.
We shook hands and had a brief word, off the record.
A few minutes later, you couldn’t have seen better acting on the Shakespearean stage. It was quite a vignette. As I walked down the five or six steps to paddock level, up walked Jos Verstappen, Max’s father and former racer.
I turned around to see what happened next. Suggestions are that Horner and Verstappen Snr despise each other with a rare passion. How would their first meeting go? It was hearty handshakes and two minutes of convivial chat.
There was no sign that Horner believes Verstappen Snr is agitating for his dismissal, along with others at the parent company’s HQ in Salzburg, following the death in October 2022 of Horner’s chief ally, the energy drinks company’s founder Dietrich Mateschitz.
Horner’s row with Dr Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s 80-year-old motorsport director, last year, also plays a part in the turbulence. The Verstappens stood by Marko, believing Horner was trying to usher him through the door.
Yet on the front seats of the veranda the warring parties sat — four chairs, the cast changing intermittently between Horner, Marko, Verstappen Snr and Verstappen Jnr and Max’s manager Raymond Vermeulen. It was a public demonstration of a contrived togetherness.
I was with Jos when people told him there were rumours abroad that he was plotting behind the scenes, pulling strings to help the aggrieved woman.
He shrugged and said no he wasn’t and that the truth would come out.
That conversation came 10 minutes before the incendiary email arrived, and the faux bonhomie went up like an atomic bomb. Horner was on the pit wall when the bang went off.
He later returned to his office, talked to his lawyers and issued a statement, saying: ‘I will not comment on anonymous speculation but to reiterate I have always denied the allegations.
‘I respected the integrity of the independent investigation and fully cooperated with it every step of the way.
‘It was a thorough and fair investigation conducted by an independent specialist barrister, and it has concluded dismissing the complaint made.
‘I remain fully focused on the start of the season.’
The only comment he was to make in person yesterday was a quick quote to Sky as he walked the 40 yards from hospitality — the champion’s place at No 1 on the street — into the garage. He again insisted he wouldn’t comment on ‘anonymous speculation from unknown sources’.
With the email having detonated, any pretence at unity was brittle. Horner and Verstappen Snr barely spoke. Horner was less visible, mostly at his desk behind a partition that separates his office from the room where they serve food to the team.
He missed the third practice session to meet FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem. He then jointly spoke to Ben Sulayem and Stefano Domenicali — CEO of Formula One Group — trying to cement his position before qualifying, in which Red Bull did what they do best with Verstappen taking pole position.
Horner intoned, his voice betraying weariness, congratulations to the fastest man out there. ‘Don’t be sorry, Max,’ he said, comforting his man on being less than pleased with his final lap. ‘That was two tenths clear of Charles (Leclerc) and three tenths clear of George (Russell).’
It was as if we were momentarily being reminded that a motor race was taking place.
But with the on-track action over for the day, attention again turned back to the only saga in the desert. Verstappen knew the question over the scandalised situation was coming. He was frustrated by it but couldn’t entirely duck it.
‘When I look at how Christian operates within the team, he has been an incredible boss, so from the performance perspective you can’t question that,’ said Verstappen, in a slightly less than roundly glowing report.
The Dutchman has been as grudging about his boss all weekend. Four times he has been asked to lend total support. It has not been forthcoming once.
‘I speak to Christian a lot and he is fully committed to the team,’ he added. ‘He is here for the performance, and of course he is a little bit distracted.’
So is everyone on a weekend so bizarre it will always stand out even in the long story of the world’s most elaborate soap opera called Formula One.