Christian Horner: From aspiring F1 driver to Red Bull team principal

“I sold everything I had,” Horner recalls. “I borrowed as much as I could from the bank, from my father – who helped me on condition that I paid him back at some point – and from everywhere else I could think of. That got me a chassis.

“I leased two engines, persuaded Roly Vincini to be my race engineer, and based the car in a shed behind Roly’s house in Norfolk. I called us Arden International. I was team manager, money hunter, secretary, cook and bottle-washer, did all the paperwork and the hassle.”

The name was taken from the area that Horner grew up in. Racing under his own banner was the first taste Horner got for managing a team and 1997 was also the first year in which his future Red Bull connections began to emerge.

“We needed a trailer, and for some reason I decided the best deal was one I found for sale in Austria,” said Horner. “I took a cheap flight to Graz to look at it. The owner, a guy I’d never heard of called Dr Marko, drove a hard bargain, but I said I’d buy it if he delivered it to Calais for me to pick up. When I told my father I’d given the cash to a complete stranger in Austria on a handshake, and I hadn’t even got the trailer yet, he thought I was mad. But Dr Marko’s handshake was good, and the trailer duly turned up at Calais.

“By now I’d found out he was the ex-F1 driver Helmut Marko, and he was running two F3000 cars for Juan Pablo Montoya and Craig Lowndes, so I soon got to know him better.”

Horner’s first season in F3000 was hardly impressive. Horner’s shoestring team, without a single spare part to his name, failed to qualify for six of the ten rounds, and raced in the knowledge that a single big shunt could end his tiny start-up outfit. However, he also admits that he was “hardly special”, and one incident, in testing ahead of his second season in 1998 brought that home to him.

“I’d just come out of the pits and Montoya flew past me into Turn 1,” Horner told Motor Sport in 2020. “I remember seeing his outside rear tyre trying to tear itself off the rim, the car at an angle it shouldn’t have been at, Juan totally committed, a guardrail close on the left, with little, if any, run-off.

“I just recall thinking, ‘I can’t do that – and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.’ I had some kind of self-preservation built in that wouldn’t even allow me to try. I knew there and then that it would be my last season as a driver.”

Horner ended the 1998 season without any points, and a 12th-place finish at Imola as the highlight of the year. “I’d loved all the racing I’d done, but I was honest enough to recognise that I was simply not at the same level as the best guys,” he said.

He now, however, had a team set up in F3000, and had already taken on a second driver in 1998 to help pay the bills. It didn’t require much imagination to think about taking Arden to the next level and, with that, Horner became a full-time team manager for the first time in 1999.

Christian Horner career stats — driver 

Christian Horner — Management Career (1999-2023)

Ahead of his first season with Arden now racing outside the cockpit, Horner was still struggling for funding but had managed to scramble enough money together for a two-car team. The budget was made a little larger when a deal was struck with Prodrive and Russian oil company Lukoil, whose owner had a son — Viktor Maslov — who wanted to race in F3000. But after two disaster-filled seasons, Horner bought Prodrive out of the deal and took the team in his own direction.

“To move the team to the next level in 2002 I knew I had to take the risk of moving away from the Lukoil funding, saying goodbye to Viktor, and taking on two really quick drivers,” he said. “The Czech Tomáš Enge was a proven F3000 race winner, and the Swede Björn Wirdheim looked a very promising rookie. Suddenly we were winning – four victories for Tomáš, one for Björn – and after a season-long battle Tomáš beat Sébastien Bourdais to the title by four points. We also won the team title.”

The team record was unfortunately blotted when Enge’s title was taken away due to a failed drug test. But the pace of Wirdheim improved enough to keep Arden International on top and he won the F3000 title in 2003.

“Now Helmut Marko comes back into the story,” said Horner. “He’d sold his team and was running Red Bull Junior. He was looking after Vitantonio Liuzzi, who looked very strong. So I did a deal with Helmut to run him with Red Bull backing in 2004, the final year of F3000 before it was replaced by GP2. Helmut did a really aggressive deal – just like when I’d bought the trailer, seven years before – with a very cheap baseline and good win bonuses. If Liuzzi hadn’t done well Arden would have gone bust, but he won seven of 10 rounds and the championship, plus our Dutch number two Robert Doornbos had a win, and we were team champions again.”

Arden was now the top team in F3000 — which was widely regarded as the last major stepping stone toward F1 — and so naturally, Horner once again set his sights on F1, but this time in search of a management role. Talks with Eddie Jordan over purchasing his F1 outfit stalled and for a time there appeared to be little prospect of an opening elsewhere, but then — almost with Hollywood timing —Dietrich Mateschitz entered the picture.

“I mentioned [my interest] to Helmut, and he said, ‘That’s interesting. Dietrich is thinking about changing Red Bull’s F1 involvement’,” said Horner. “At that point they owned a chunk of Sauber, and were sponsoring Christian Klien at Jaguar. So Helmut set up a meeting in Salzburg and I met Dietrich for the first time.

“It was all very amiable, he gave me plenty of time, and we seemed to get on well. His understanding of F1 was very acute. We had a chat about Jordan, but he said, ‘That doesn’t look interesting for us. We might have an opportunity with Jaguar, we’re looking at that.’

“Then, just before Christmas, Helmut asked me to fly to Salzburg and see Dietrich again. Very quickly he outlined his vision for Red Bull in F1, and he offered me the role of team principal. It was a huge thing for me, that he was prepared to put his faith in me to deliver that vision. Of course I said yes.”

The origins of Red Bull 

Horner officially became Red Bull’s team principal on January 7, 2005 — just eight weeks before for the first race of the season in Melbourne. His wasn’t the only fresh face at the factory, as David Coulthard had also agreed to join the team from McLaren over the winter break.

“I was absolutely delighted he’d been signed, said Horner. “He was a winner, and he was bringing us 11 seasons of experience with two top teams. I could draw so much out of DC in terms of benchmarking, telling us how things compared with what he’d been used to at McLaren.

“He was already fairly dismayed by what he’d seen at Milton Keynes, but I really wanted to get the best out of him, because when he left McLaren people thought his career was pretty much at an end. He’d been written off. I wanted to regenerate his self-belief.”

The results of Horner’s first year in charge certainly changed the perspectives of many who saw Red Bull as a Mickey Mouse outfit and nothing more, as the team finished an impressive seventh and scored 34 points in total — over three times the haul of Jaguar in its final year (nine points).

Coulthard was responsible for 70% of the points himself, with his best finish coming in his first race at Melbourne where he qualified fifth and finished fourth. Team-mate Christian Klien finished just three places behind him.

But arguably the biggest accomplishment of Horner’s first year in F1 wasn’t even achieved on track, as he managed to lure Adrian Newey — modern F1’s greatest car designer — from McLaren.

Signing Adrian Newey

“At Monaco we had the Energy Station floating on the harbour, we had a Star Wars thing going, and Adrian was inquisitive,” said Horner. “So he came on board to see what we were doing. I confided to David, who of course had worked most of his time at McLaren with Adrian and knew him very well, that I’d like to have a crack at getting him to join us.

“David said, ‘Here are his phone numbers. Let’s see if we can sort out dinner.’ So in July David and I had dinner with Adrian and his wife at the Bluebird in the King’s Road. David exuded enthusiasm about Red Bull and the team, but we didn’t talk about the prospect of Adrian joining, we just had an enjoyable, relaxed evening, and he and I really hit it off. I could sense that he was frustrated at McLaren. They hadn’t treated him particularly well, and it didn’t seem like there was any magic between him and Ron. And his contract was about to expire.

“I told Dietrich I thought we had a chance of getting him – although I didn’t tell him at that stage how big an investment I thought it would be! Dietrich said at once, ‘Let’s see if we can make it happen.’ So in October we flew Adrian to Salzburg, helicoptered him into the mountains for a casual lunch with Dietrich, and then we showed him something of what Red Bull is like. Among other things, we stuck him in our Alpha Jet fighter and he went inverted over Kitzbühel at 500ft.

“That evening I broached the subject: ‘Adrian, we’d love to have you. Do you want to come?’ He stated a figure which caught my attention, because it was about 70% higher than I’d warned Dietrich we might have to pay. I called Dietrich, he went quiet for a few seconds, then he said, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

Newey’s involvement within the team was felt almost immediately, as shortly after his arrival to Milton Keynes in February 2006, he immediately began suggesting changes that would change Red Bull’s fate as a F1 constructor.

“Adrian forced a change of culture on us, because the way he works is completely different. We weren’t prepared for the amount of detail he gets involved in. For starters, he still uses a drawing board. I had to do a deal with Martin Whitmarsh and make a payment to charity to get McLaren to release his beloved board, which had followed him there from Williams and is now in his office at Red Bull.”

Alongside Newey, Horner employed other key members of staff including Rob Marshall, Peter Prodromou, Paul Monaghan, Mark Ellis, Ciaron Pilbeam, Guillaume ‘Rocky’ Rocquelin and Jonathan Wheatley, many of whom are still prominent members. Each one played a critical role in what ultimately was to come.

The first Newey-designed Red Bull — the RB3 — coincided with the arrival of Mark Webber in 2007 — a combination which would claim Red Bull’s first ever F1 podium finish at the European Grand Prix. The team also secured fifth in the constructors’ standings, beating the likes of Toyota and Honda.

The following year looked to be a step back as the Milton Keynes marque once again fell to seventh overall, but after signing a young Sebastian Vettel — a driver who had been with the Red Bull junior programme since the age of 12 — Horner’s team was finally set to soar in 2009.

Horner pushes Red Bull into winning era 

Six race wins — the first of which came in China courtesy of Vettel with Webber finishing 10 seconds behind — and 10 podium finishes was enough for second in the constructors’ standings behind a dominant Brawn outfit. But the newest regulation changes had allowed Newey to flex some of his creative muscles and the following four seasons were filled with overwhelming success.

Vettel won four straight F1 drivers’ championships and the consistency of Webber on the other side of the garage allowed Red Bull to take a clean sweep of constructors’ titles too.

The following year, Webber decided to part ways with Red Bull and Horner decided on Daniel Ricciardo to fill his seat. But a lack of development from Renault into its power unit left Red Bull disadvantaged, and their next stint of struggle began just as quickly as it had stopped.

“I went to see [former Renault/Nissan CEO] Carlos Ghosn early in 2014 about the investment Renault needed to make,” Horner said, “because it was clear Mercedes had stolen a march, but unfortunately my pleas fell on deaf ears.

“The next two seasons felt tough, having come off the back of all that success. We won three races and finished second in the championship for constructors in 2014, but that was still a huge comedown from where we’d been. It was hard to keep the group together because offers were coming in for all our key players. It was a different challenge.”

Vettel was the next big name to leave Red Bull, as he traded Milton Keynes for Maranello ahead of the 2015 season. Horner once again chose to promote from within and hired the talents of Daniil Kvyat to replace him, although the German’s departure troubled him deeply.

“Whenever [Vettel] was in the UK, he’d stay at our house,” he said. “I got him out delivering lambs, shooting clay pigeons, all sorts… We hit it off from day one and always had a good relationship. After he left, I decided I needed to change the way I ran things – it’s very difficult to have somebody who is both a friend and an employee and Seb had become a mate. I came to a conscious decision that there should in future be boundaries between team principal and drivers.”

From then on Horner became ruthless with his driver line-up choices and has remained so to this day. After a mediocre stint with the team — and despite outpointing Ricciardo in 2015 — Kvyat was the first victim of the team principal’s new management style as he was suddenly replaced by none other than Max Verstappen at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix; a race the 18-year-old Dutchman duly won.

“When he was karting, people were talking about him as an exceptional prospect,” Horner said. “Helmut was reluctant to get involved at that point, but later he watched him competing in F3 at Silverstone and started to take an interest – it might also have been a factor that [Marko’s old racing rival] Niki Lauda was showing an interest in recruiting him for Mercedes. It became a bit of a challenge to see who could sign him first.

“Helmut has always been good at spotting talent and the one thing he could offer, which Mercedes couldn’t, was an F1 seat. It was a ballsy move because Max was only halfway through his first season of car racing. I think [Toro Rosso team principal] Franz Tost was concerned about his lack of experience – and then he did a demonstration run in a show car [Rotterdam, August 2014] and knocked off the front wing! His next outing was at Suzuka, where he took part in FP1, and Franz spent the first 20 minutes trying to slow him down through 130R – I think he was flat from about his second lap. He did a phenomenal job and you could see very quickly that he was something out of the ordinary.”

Verstappen would join Ricciardo for the remainder of the 2016 season, and the pairing would go onto secure 14 podium finishes between them — enough for second place in the constructors’ standings.

Red Bull’s new era

With a strong driver line-up re-established, Horner once again turned his attention back toward a engine supplier which could help deliver more world championships to Milton Keynes while also trying to keep Newey on-board.

“Ferrari had offered him a film star lifestyle and salary and it was quite likely that he would leave,” Horner recalled “because he saw no hope of success with Renault [who had decided re-join F1 as a works team] and the Ferrari offer would allow him to do other things, such as a road car. So, I said: ‘Don’t worry, we can do that…’ At the time I had no idea how we were going to do it, but we created Red Bull Advanced Technologies to start exploring how we could put a road car together.

“Adrian started drawing away, creating surfaces and exploring his vision. When Andy Palmer moved across from Renault/Nissan to take over as Aston Martin’s CEO, I told him that Red Bull wasn’t in a position to take on the liability of producing a road car but could act as a design house for an automotive manufacturer, so why didn’t we do something together?”

The result would become the Valkyrie, a 1140hph F1-inspired road car which are still on sale for £2.6m apiece. Meanwhile Newey remains at Red Bull to this day — a long-term investment which is still paying out.

After missing out on an engine deal with Mercedes, Horner’s growing frustration with Renault — who had forced Red Bull to change the same of their power units to Tag Heur — finally reached a braking point in 2018, when a deal with Honda was finally reached.

“Bernie Ecclestone was very keen to help push it through,” said Horner. “But McLaren [having used Honda PU’s from 2014-2017] had a power of veto and – quite rightly, from their perspective – exercised it. Ron Dennis was still there at the time and could see the potential. After Ron left, though, the new management eventually decided to split with Honda and it made absolute sense for us to team up [initially through Toro Rosso] because we’d simply been getting more and more frustrated and, without a competitive engine, it was difficult to see Red Bull committing to F1 in the longer term. We had nothing to lose.”

Honda’s Red Bull power unit was first integrated into the RB15 (2019), with which Verstappen won in Austria, Germany and Brazil. Simultaneously, Horner was forced to replace Ricciardo — who made a shock departure for Renault — with Pierre Gasly, who consequently failed to match the pace set by Verstappen and became another victim of Red Bull’s ruthless approach to driver line-ups and was replaced by Alex Albon mid-season.

“Pierre is exceptionally fast when everything is just right,” Horner said, “but he had two pre-season testing accidents and you could see the pressure mounting. The harder he tried, the slower he seemed to go. It was painful to watch because we knew he was quick and wanted him to do well. I don’t think the RB15 was the easiest car to drive – it’s just Max made it look easy.”

With Verstappen at its core, Red Bull’s partnership with Honda continued to evolve, as the team would score a further two victories in 2020 alongside 10 podium finishes. In the winter break that followed, Albon was replaced by Sergio Perez — an experienced figure in the F1 paddock — who later played vital roles in a title battle which has remained engraved in the minds of many.

2021 and beyond 

In film-like fashion and after a season filled with drama and controversy Verstappen passed title rival Lewis Hamilton on the final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix while Horner screamed and later cried on the pitwall.

Hamilton had looked destined to win — particularly after a late safety car period — until race director Michael Masi threw out all precedent, rushed the safety car procedure and set up a final lap of racing where Verstappen had an advantage on fresher tyres. Although it was achieved by way of Masi veering away from the rulebook, not only had the now 48-year-old once again led a drivers’ world championship victory for Red Bull, he’d also emerged the victor in a personal rivalry over Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff, after the pair clashed on numerous occasions over the course of the season.

“It doesn’t faze me, it’s a bit of sport isn’t it?” he said in the F1 Racing Confidential book. “If you have a competitor who is getting a bit wound up and throwing a few bombs, if you can disarm them in a public forum, well.

“When you see a competitor smashing up headphones or pointing at cameras, visibly losing it in front of a camera you think ‘Okay we are under your skin.”

Netflix’s Drive to Survive revealed another clash between the pair in 2022, when team principals met to discuss the porpoising issues which plagued the majority of the field.

Horner has seemingly had the last laugh ever since.

In 2022, Verstappen’s victories gave the team an unprecedented winning margin in both championships, and the advantage was even greater in 2023. Over both seasons, Red Bull scored a combined 38 victories — more than every other team combined — and had 20 further podium appearances, leading to the highest point totals ever scored in F1’s 74-year history. The once-failed Milton Keynes outfit also now hold records for: the most wins in a single season (21), the highest race win percentage (95.45%), the most consecutive victories (15), the largest lead in the constructors’ championship (451 points between RB and Mercedes), the most wins from pole position (12) and many more.

Christian Horner stats — team principal