After weeks of turmoil at Red Bull Racing, the team’s beleaguered principal, Christian Horner, had issued a plea at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, more in hope than realism, that it was time to draw a line under the controversy that had surrounded him and his team.
However, what followed in Formula One’s first week off since the new season began dashed whatever faint hopes he must have nurtured and the scrutiny is set to be renewed this weekend at Australian Grand Prix, where the temporary moratorium on the infighting at Red Bull will once more come under intense pressure.
Horner has endured the most turbulent and difficult two months of his career since it was made public in early February that he was being investigated for alleged inappropriate behaviour after a complaint made by a female employee of the team. The grievance was dismissed on 28 February just before the season-opening Bahrain GP.
Horner always denied any wrongdoing but there was to be no respite. A day later an email was leaked to the FIA, F1, the teams and the media that purported to contain messages between Horner and the complainant and since then the storm has only grown.
By the race weekend in Saudi Arabia, what was perceived to have been part of a power struggle at Red Bull took full flight. The world champion Max Verstappen’s father, Jos, was openly calling for Horner to step down, the team’s motorsport director, Helmut Marko, was under threat of suspension, prompting Verstappen to threaten to leave. To which Horner responded by calling his bluff in stating that no single person is bigger than the team.
This was an unprecedented level of contortion and infighting for an F1 team, occurring very much in public, an anathema for organisations so dedicated to exercising iron control over information and image.
As the floodlights went out in Jeddah, the official line from Red Bull was one of team unity and that ruffled feathers had been smoothed and that every implement capable of making a mark was being employed to emphatically draw as many lines as possible.
It was an exercise in vain. Shortly afterwards it was revealed the complainant had been suspended from her role, it is believed on the basis of questions around the evidence she gave to the investigation. That was followed by the employee opting to appeal against the Horner decision.
Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, has cleared its president, Mohammed ben Sulayem, of two allegations of interference in grands prix in the 2023 season after investigation by the FIA’s compliance officer and its six-person ethics body. However, no details or evidence from the investigation has been released.
The allegations had been made to the FIA by a whistleblower that Ben Sulayem had interfered with two sporting decisions in 2023. The first was to have interceded in the stewards' decision at the Saudi Arabian GP to impose a penalty on Fernando Alonso and have them reverse it, after which Alonso claimed a podium place.
The second was that before the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix last year he had requested that the new track not be homologated for racing. It was alleged that officials had ignored the request and approved the homologation.
The claims were made public in leaked documents but the FIA statement said it found no evidence of interference by the president.
“After reviewing the results of the inquiries, the ethics committee were unanimous in their determination that there was no evidence to substantiate allegations of interference of any kind involving the FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem.”
The conclusions stated the investigation was run by the FIA compliance officer and reviewed by the ethics committee, over a period of 30 days and included 11 witness interviews that came to a conclusive decision. “Allegations against the FIA president were unsubstantiated and strong evidence beyond any reasonable doubt was presented to support the determination of the FIA ethics committee,” the statement said.
No details of the allegations were released, however, nor of the evidence presented to refute the claims. With the sport under enormous pressure to demonstrate transparency given the circumstances around the recent allegations against the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, there may be some disquiet within F1 that the FIA itself has conducted an internal investigation but has not provided any detail of how and why it reached its conclusions. Giles Richards
Then last week it was reported that she had lodged a complaint about Horner’s behaviour to the ethics committee of the sport’s governing body, the FIA. The complaint was said to follow two previous reports to the FIA in recent weeks made by a whistleblower, both relating to Horner and Red Bull. The FIA will not comment on complaints received and Red Bull have declined to make any statement on these reports.
None of this will have gone unnoticed by the various factions that will surely have spent the weeks leading to Melbourne taking a breath and formulating new tactics. From the struggle for control between Red Bull’s majority Thai owners, who back Horner, and the Austrian wing of the parent company, down to the internal fracas between Horner and the Verstappens and Horner and Marko – all of which it seems is inextricably linked to the bigger battle – there is no sense that simply stating harmony has been achieved will actually translate into a ceasefire in Melbourne.
The broader implications for the sport remain of enormous concern and will be raised once more in Australia. The lack of transparency has only incited speculation, and these most recent events will have fuelled further disquiet at the way the episode has been handled and the potential damage it is doing to the sport’s reputation. Several team principals have expressed dissatisfaction at the way it has been dealt with and have called for the FIA to step in.
F1 and the FIA are understood to want to be privy to the details of the investigation, which they are unable to obtain because of confidentiality agreements with the parties involved, but the FIA at the very least appears now to have been drawn into having to actively take part if it is to investigate complaints to its own ethics committee. The affair is if anything not receding but escalating.
On track this weekend Red Bull have the opportunity to cement the evidence that they are once more in complete control of the season. Yet the racing, the very sport itself, remains almost a sideshow to the turbulent politics that dominate Red Bull and F1 to a greater extent than the extraordinarily formidable car the team brings to the grid.
