Shifting sands: Horner saga raises questions of what really goes on in F1
Say what you like about Christian Horner, but when it comes to crisis PR management he is a star pupil. On Thursday evening in Saudi Arabia, he was asked 12 questions about the storm raging at Red Bull, but his message never deviated. Nine times he used the words “move on”, “look forward” or “move forward”. And on 16 occasions he stressed the need to focus on the future. On the race, the season, the track – anything, in fact, but the soap opera swirling around him.
“There’s obviously been an awful lot of coverage around this situation,” he said at one point. “But I think the time really is now to move on, to focus on what’s going on on the track.” That’s the three As of crisis PR management right there – accept, acknowledge, affirm.
That, essentially, has been the Red Bull approach during this extraordinary past fortnight. No matter how devilish the twist or tawdry the turn, the media strategy has been to keep affirming the message and turning the page. But, as Horner keeps discovering, it is not so easy to do when some pages seem stuck together with super glue – or when his rivals smell blood.
“The other teams are enjoying the soap opera and schadenfreude because Christian is not one of the most popular of team principals,” says one insider. “But they are also annoyed and worried that all this is taking the gleam off the actual sport.”
As things stand, Red Bull’s team principal is facing problems on at least four fronts. First, while Horner has been cleared of allegations of controlling behaviour towards a female colleague – who has now been suspended on full pay – she can still appeal. It is understood the woman involved has not yet done so but had until next week. When contacted, Red Bull said it could not comment on an internal matter. Should she appeal that would add more rocket fuel to the news cycle, and threaten to disturb the ground under Horner’s feet again.
We still don’t know, for instance, whether the contents of the leaked messages purportedly between Horner and a female colleague were genuine. And, if they were, whether they were included in the two-month internal inquiry headed by a KC. Horner has always emphatically denied any wrongdoing, but has persistently refused to make any comment on the leaked email. However, these questions won’t go away.
A second lurking landmine is the persistent rumour of another stash of leaked messages waiting to drop. That has been pit lane gossip for over a week now, and it may come to nothing. But how can Horner completely move on when he never knows what is coming from one day to the next?
It certainly doesn’t help when Jos Verstappen, the father of his star driver Max, is sniping and stirring at every opportunity. Horner has publicly denied Verstappen senior’s behaviour was unsettling the team. No one in F1 believes that.
If all that wasn’t enough, there is the ongoing power struggle at Red Bull, which has simmered ever since the company’s billionaire co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz died in 2022.
Informed insiders say that Red Bull HQ wants – at the very least – to clip Horner’s wings and take back control of the F1 team, which it has far less influence over than its other sporting investments. However, that is tricky when the Thai majority shareholder at Red Bull, Chalerm Yoovidhya, is said to firmly back Horner. At some point, the unrelenting media spotlight might change people’s minds, of course, or it could all die down. But no one knows for sure.
Meanwhile, there is a broader problem also at play here: the power imbalance that exists between men and women in F1. Some in the sport believe things have improved significantly, but it is hardly reassuring when it emerged that the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, wrote on his personal website in 2001 that he does not like “women who think they are smarter than men”.
On Friday evening there was yet another twist, with Motorsport.com reporting that Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko was now subject to an investigation relating to “various media leaks that have taken place since it emerged that Horner was being looked at by Red Bull’s energy drinks company”.
Asked about the possibility of a suspension being imposed from Monday, Marko told Austrian TV: “I’ll put it this way, it’s difficult to judge, or let’s put it this way, ultimately, I’ll decide for myself what I do. The theoretical possibility always exists.” However, Red Bull are yet to comment.
One executive, who has now left F1, says he was shocked at what he called the “widespread culture of sexist and misogynistic behaviour and lack of diversity,” in the sport.
At the press conference on Thursday, Horner was specifically asked about the optics of this latest saga and the effect it could have on female fans of F1 – especially given Red Bull have previously made efforts to show that the sport was a positive place for women.
‘Well, I think it’s a complicated issue, because within any company there is a grievance process,” he said. “And that is private between the individuals. Even if I would like to talk about it, I can’t due to confidentiality restrictions.”
That was a perfectly fair response, but Horner then turned his focus on the media, and his rivals. “The only reason it has gained so much attention is because of leakage in the media,” he insisted. “And that’s been trying, particularly for my family because it’s all been focused in one direction.
“And what has happened after that is other people have taken advantage of it. Others have looked to benefit from it, and that’s maybe not the pretty side of our sport.”
Not for the first time, Horner promised he was not going anywhere. And he also predicted that Max Verstappen would see out his current contract, which runs to 2028.
The message was clear: for Red Bull it will be business as usual in the Saudi Arabian desert this weekend. On the track few would disagree. But off it, there remains a sense of shifting sands and deepening uncertainties.