Christian Horner’s leadership remained shrouded in doubt on Sunday with a schism at the heart of Red Bull threatening to tear the team apart from the inside, while continued criticism from outside the camp only added to the pressure on the beleaguered team principal.
Jos Verstappen, the father of Max Verstappen, publicly called for Horner to be removed from his role, warning Red Bull is “in danger of being torn apart”. Red Bull were then forced to issue a statement denying any issues, claiming “the team are united and we are focused on racing”. Meanwhile Horner’s fierce rival, Toto Wolff of Mercedes, said pointedly that he hoped the F1 authorities would “set the compass right”.
Horner may have wished Red Bull’s dominant start to the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with an easy victory for Verstappen, would ease the pressure but those hopes were short-lived after the driver’s father chose to speak out.
Jos Verstappen, speaking to the Daily Mail, declared publicly for the first time he believed Horner should go. “There is tension here while he remains in position,” he said. “The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.”
Verstappen Sr has been accused in some quarters of attempting to oust Horner from his job. But the 51-year-old father of Red Bull’s three-time world champion said: “That wouldn’t make sense. Why would I do that when Max is doing so well here?”
The controversy surrounding the Red Bull team principal, exonerated by an independent investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour made by a female employee but involved in a leaked email exchange containing messages said to be between him and the complainant, dominated the season’s opening week.
Horner did make a show of solidarity with his wife Geri, who arrived hand in hand with her husband at the track on Saturday. The couple are understood to have already returned to the UK before Horner flies out to Saudi Arabia for the second race of the season this week.
Horner insisted after the race on Saturday that he was confident he would continue to lead the team and he is understood to still enjoy the backing of Chalerm Yoovidhya, who owns a 51% share of Red Bull GmbH, the team’s parent company. The Thai joined Horner on the grid on Saturday.
Red Bull claim the air has been cleared between the two camps yet Verstappen’s statement was the first public presentation of what has been perceived as a fundamental divide at the heart of the team, with Jos playing a central role in his son’s career and decision-making process.
Max Verstappen was notably reluctant to express his full confidence in Horner over the race weekend and when pushed only confirmed he was fully behind Horner in his role for the team in a “performance” perspective. On Saturday Horner stated he would not comment on the motives behind the leak nor its contents.
In the wider arena Horner is also facing critical examination that will not quickly abate. Wolff, the Mercedes team principal who has been an ardent supporter of diversity and inclusivity in F1, had already called for the findings of the investigation into Horner to be made public and after the race he insisted that the issues at stake are of greater import then the sport itself or it being merely point scoring across rival teams.
“The moment I start to continue to question how this has been handled, I am probably not doing any good to the whole issue because then it could be seen as just about a power fight within F1,” he said. “It is not in the teams’ hands, it is a much bigger topic. I don’t want to diminish the situation by making it seem like the Mercedes or McLaren guy talks about the Red Bull guy.
“Let’s see how it goes in the next days and I would very much hope the governing body, the commercial rights holder, sets the compass right.”
Indeed F1 and the FIA, who both had discussions with Horner over the weekend, are also understood to be concerned about the impact the events are having on the sport’s reputation, although neither will comment publicly until they have seen the results of the investigation, which Red Bull will not release. The FIA also still potentially has recourse to take action under its sporting code which specifically addresses bringing the sport into disrepute.
On the track things were much smoother for Red Bull, with Wolff admitting Red Bull and Verstappen Jr are “in a different galaxy” after the Dutchman crushed the opposition at the season-opener.
The 26-year-old world champion won by 22 seconds from his own Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez, who used identical machinery at the Sakhir circuit. It was a demonstration of complete mastery, Verstappen leading through every lap and completely unchallenged out in front once he held his pole-position lead into the first corner of the first lap. The closest of the rest of the field was Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz who came third, 25 seconds in arrears.
Verstappen enjoyed as much as a one second-a-lap pace advantage over the rest of the field for vast swathes of the race, leaving the opposition – who had expected the new Red Bull car to be strong – reeling nonetheless.
“Max is not in a different league but he’s in a different galaxy, the performance is extraordinary,” said Wolff.
Last season Red Bull won 21 of the 22 races and Verstappen won 19 of those. When asked if he believed the three-time defending champion could win every race, Wolff agreed that on this form, with the Red Bull proving to be so dominant, it was easily conceivable.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “[We] just have to acknowledge his performance levels are really strong.”
Lewis Hamilton, in what will be his last season for Mercedes before he joins Ferrari in 2025, laboured from ninth on the grid to seventh, while his teammate George Russell went from third on the grid to fifth. The Mercedes car is an improvement on the previous two poorly performing iterations and the drivers clearly feel more confident with it but it has some way to go.
Wolff admitted that they suffered with engine cooling issues that forced them to turn the engine down, costing them power, but still admitted that Mercedes had little hope of making up the gap to Red Bull.
“I believe our performance was masked by our problems,” he said. “Pérez is 20 seconds behind his teammate, so we have hope. That is maybe the silver lining I can see, but it is very thin and far away and I almost can’t see that far.”
