How a Team Splits at the Seams
Christian Horner exited Red Bull Racing after 20 years on Wednesday
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Among Red Bull’s 80 milligrams of caffeine and 27 grams of sugar, marketing has always been its secret ingredient.
Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, a cosmetics salesman, discovered a local drink in Thailand in the early ‘80s that would inspire Red Bull’s sugary-sweet recipe. It became a hit thanks to Mateschitz’s strategy: selling extreme sports in an 8.4-ounce can and convincing those who drank the “upper” that they, too, could be invincible.
A carefully crafted, unhinged energy, Red Bull’s identity has always been disruptive. Nothing was quite as disruptive as when it bulldozed through the Formula 1 paddock in 2005.
Part of the team’s plan to “take the piss out of the sport” included injecting some fun trackside. Its three-story hospitality suite included an open-door policy, rooftop parties and a pool. Its tabloid magazine, The Red Bulletin, was designed to shake up F1’s rigid, status-obsessed image.
Christian Horner, 31 years old at the time and the sport’s youngest team principal and CEO, was tasked with creating a successful Formula 1 team out of that rowdy energy. After 20 years, Horner was fired from his role at Red Bull Racing on Wednesday.
The decision followed two seasons of Red Bull slowly splitting at the seams.
Some might say that the first thread unraveled on lap three of the 2024 Australian Grand Prix when a cloud of smoke billowed from the No. 1 Red Bull car. After winning 19 of 23 races the previous season in an unprecedented performance streak, Max Verstappen retired from a race for the first time in two years. I was in a bar on the Upper East Side when his race car limped back to the pit lane. A collective yawp ripped through the room. Thought to be unbeatable, Red Bull suddenly looked less bullish and more conquerable.
But others might point to a month before Formula 1 touched down in Melbourne. In February, a female employee at the racing team accused Horner of sexual misconduct. The team boss denied the allegations and Red Bull, working with an independent investigator, cleared Horner of any wrongdoing. Just a day later, an anonymous email sent a collection of alleged WhatsApp messages between the employee and Horner, including explicit photos, to the press and Formula 1’s nine other teams.
The team’s workplace environment received more scrutiny this March when a sentence from former Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas’ book “Life in the Pitlane” went viral. In chronicling his experience at the team, he recalled a driver’s prank on then-sporting director Jonathan Wheatley which included displaying pornography on his pit wall screen.
As the team’s focus shifted off-track, with rumors of Verstappen shopping around for other teams, two parties began to emerge within Red Bull: those who were pro-Horner and those, like Verstappen’s father, who said the team would be “torn apart” if he stayed. Red Bull’s lead designer, Adrian Newey, announced he was moving to Aston Martin a month after the 2024 season began. The team’s sporting director was quick to follow suit, leaving Red Bull in favor of Sauber. Sergio “Checo” Perez’s flailing form, paired with McLaren’s performance gain and a series of driver promotions and subsequent demotions, only exacerbated what was looking more and more inevitable.
But even less than a year ago in the midst of a seven-race losing streak, it seemed premature to discount Verstappen. Red Bull, at least on the surface, still looked like its casually-cool self — especially 6,000 miles away from another loss on the race track.
On a misty Saturday morning in September, I stood against a barricaded press pit branded with Red Bull’s signature charging bulls logo. The energy drink giant had turned downtown Minneapolis into an impromptu race track. Former F1 driver David Coulthard joined a collection of Red Bull-backed motorsport athletes in painting thin layers of black rubber on the intersection of South Fourth Street and Portland Avenue.
For many of the tens of thousands of midwesterners standing on light poles and retaining walls to get a better vantage point, it was their first time seeing a Formula 1 car and driver in the flesh. The show runs act as some of the best marketing money can buy: showcasing exactly what people are missing by not watching Formula 1 live. It’s not surprising that taking the sport on the road was Red Bull’s idea. The team is known for brainstorming even the most out-there ideas and bringing them to fruition: from Coulthard doing donuts nearly 700 feet in the air atop a helipad in Dubai to a then-18-year-old Verstappen climbing the snow-packed slope of the Streif ski run in a Red Bull Formula 1 car in Kitzbühel, Austria.
On the eve of Red Bull’s Minneapolis show run, the RB7 — adorned with a number 37 and a modern paint job — belted out a pitchy “Star Spangled Banner” from its engine, some employee’s far-out idea that got the green light. Characteristic of the brand, a rooftop party followed, complete with vodka Red Bulls, blaring music and a whole host of sponsored athletes. A brief peek over the railing revealed the RB7. It sat atop a pedestal in the city’s sculpture garden as if it were a piece of public art.
A handful of months later, the memory of the race car’s paint job doesn't quite scream masterpiece and is instead a callback to the peak before a rapid descent. Without the sheen of two trophies and an awe-inspiring dominant driving streak from Verstappen, being the sport’s resident “cool” team doesn’t look so effortless anymore.
But if anything, Red Bull stays true to its ruthless stereotype. What has made the energy drink empire so successful in the sport is making risky decisions when it matters most. The kind of risk that puts a 17-year-old in a car going over 200 mph. The kind of risk that sometimes requires cutting corners and bringing a scrappy fight to a polished sport.
Some of those risks reaped big rewards, like Verstappen’s four titles and resume of records. Others, like not putting Horner on leave during an active investigation for inappropriate workplace behavior, threatened reputational damage to the brand.
In Red Bull’s eyes, firing the man who led the team to six constructors’ championships and eight drivers’ titles is worth the risk. Now run by former Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies, the team will attempt to keep Verstappen trade talks at bay and hold together what is left of a Formula 1 team.
Red Bull without Verstappen would be the team’s biggest risk of all.