The Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, has warned that there is no guarantee the team can hang on to their three-time world champion Max Verstappen should he choose to leave, as the impact from another turbulent weekend for the team continues to be felt.
After a fractious race meeting in Saudi Arabia, Red Bull’s travails off the track far overshadowed Verstappen’s second dominant win of the season in Jeddah, including the 26-year-old world champion threatening he could quit Red Bull. Horner conceded that if Verstappen wanted to join another team, Red Bull could not stop him. When asked about the potential for Verstappen to leave before his contract is up in 2028, Horner admitted it remained a realistic possibility.
“It’s like anything in life, you can’t force somebody to be somewhere just because of a piece of paper,” he said. “If somebody didn’t want to be in this team, then we’re not going to force somebody against their will to be here. That applies whether it is a machine operator or a designer or someone in one of the support functions that runs through the business.”
Despite the furore over the weekend Horner did insist the relationship with Verstappen remained strong, even as the driver appears to have lined up on the other side of a divide within the team.
“It is absolutely fine with Max,” Horner said. “He’s working well within the team. There’s no tension, there’s no stress. You can see how relaxed he is around the garage with everybody in the team and that’s translating to his performance on track as well. So we don’t see any issues with Max. I’m aware of all that noise, but it hasn’t distracted the team from the job, and we are one team now.”
Verstappen’s future and a potential move to another team was only the latest crisis to hit the beleaguered Horner and his team over another weekend of turmoil for Red Bull. Still dealing with the controversy around Horner’s investigation for alleged inappropriate behaviour by a female employee, a grievance which was dismissed, what appears to be very real schism and power struggle across Red Bull racing and its parent company Red Bull GmbH rolled on throughout the weekend and shows no sign of abating in the lull before the Australian Grand Prix on 24 March.
Red Bull’s director of motorsport, Helmut Marko, said on Friday that he was under investigation and in danger of suspension, for what was believed to have been leaking information relating to the investigation. Verstappen promptly came to Marko’s defence and warned that should the 80‑year‑old be removed the Dutchman would consider leaving.
Marko subsequently met the Red Bull GmbH chief executive, Oliver Mintzlaff, and declared the matter had been cleared up and closed but it had already illustrated a schism at the heart of the team, one emphasised further when Verstappen’s father Jos launched his second attack on Horner, saying he believed the team principal should leave his role.
Horner pointedly hit back after the race in Jeddah, stating that “we are a team and no single individual is bigger than the team”, apparently willing to call Verstappen’s bluff over his threat to leave. Horner has repeatedly called for a line to be drawn under the controversy but if anything the weekend only exposed the scale of the contortions racking the team, now involving the Thai majority owners of the parent company (who back Horner), the Austrian wing of said company, believed to be favoured by Verstappen and Marko, Horner and his opponents and of course the sponsors and partners watching it with increasing ill-ease.
There was no controversy in the praise heaped upon the British rookie Oliver Bearman, who made his F1 debut in Jeddah and did brilliantly to claim seventh place for Ferrari, despite having only driven the car for two hours before the race when he was drafted in at the last minute to replace an appendicitis‑stricken Carlos Sainz late on Friday morning. Lewis Hamilton paid tribute to the 18-year-old from Chelmsford, who became the youngest British driver to take part in a grand prix.
“To be pulled out of your class and put straight into a Ferrari and then to go straight into practice, he did such a phenomenal job and it just showed he is a really bright future star,” Hamilton said.
