Christian Horner's 'scary ambition' that was obvious the moment he entered F1

I have deliberately not commented, tweeted or written about the recent scuttlebutt connected to Christian Horner. That was to my mind the judicious and correct approach because, now, an independent, thorough and lengthy inquiry led by a KC (King’s Counsel, which title signifies a British barrister or solicitor-advocate of high rank) has been concluded, and its findings have exonerated the Red Bull team principal. From a legal and indeed an ethical point of view, that is where any responsible journalist ought to let his, her or their contemporary reporting rest. Nonetheless, now is an opportune moment to mull over some of the complexities that make up a remarkably ambitious and successful man. What follows is therefore a personal trot through some of my interactions with him over the past 20 years.

I first spent any appreciable time with him in Shanghai, two days before the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix, on Friday September 24 of that year therefore, and our encounter was pleasant if somewhat unusual. I was then the 41-year-old editor in chief of a successful and big-selling Formula 1 magazine, and I had been in that position for eight years, whereas Horner was just 30, had been retired as a racing driver for just five years, and was running Arden International’s Formula 3000 programme. He was not particularly well known in F1, which was in a parlous political state at the time. Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley were at their most menacing, McLaren’s Ron Dennis and Williams’ Frank Williams were at their most rebellious, and three teams were in serious financial trouble: Jordan (now Aston Martin), Jaguar (now Red Bull) and Minardi (now RB). Horner was in Shanghai at the behest of Ecclestone and Mosley, whose spin doctor (aka communications director) Richard Woods was telling every influential journalist that “clever young Christian Horner” was a man to watch. That surprised many of us, for hitherto we had regarded him as a second-rate driver who had sensibly given up racing to devote his energies to running teams in feeder formulae. He had set up Arden in 1997, using a loan from his father, and by the time I met him in September 2004 it had won the F3000 championship at each of the previous three times of asking (2002, 2003 and 2004). Ecclestone and Mosley both regarded him as a young man going places, and many F1 insiders were sniffing around him, trying to help him or advise him and of course earn a few crumbs that might one day fall from his table, one of them Tony Schulp, then the commercial director of the publishing house that owned the magazine for which I was working.

Early that Thursday morning I took a call from Schulp, who was eating his breakfast at the Portman Ritz Carlton, then the swankiest hotel in Shanghai, and had scheduled business meetings there throughout the morning. “So could you swing by here to pick Christian up and take him to the circuit? He doesn’t know his way around so you can travel in with him and give him a steer when you get there. Take my car.” I was staying at the oddly named and significantly less luxurious Rendezvous Merry, so I got myself ready and set forth on the 25-minute walk along Nanjing Road, the busy and bustling thoroughfare that separates the two hotels.

When I arrived at the Portman Ritz Carlton, I found Horner in the lobby. He looked slightly younger than his 30 years, his haircut gauche, almost schoolboyish. I had seen him during European grand prix weekends from time to time, but we had never spoken to each other. We recognised each other immediately, however, and he greeted me politely but without smalltalk. “Apparently our car is ready, so let’s go,” he said. He then asked the concierge to summon our driver and, when our ride pulled to a halt beside the hotel’s imposing and porticoed entrance, we were amazed and amused to see that it was a then-20-something-year-old Mercedes-Benz W116-series 450SEL stretch limo, very grand when new but now rather tatty. We climbed into its cavernous rear quarters, looked at each other, and sniggered giddily.

For, not only is he scarily ambitious, in fact, but also he is remorselessly combative, and the senior lieutenants whom he has gathered around him are of like mind. Winning means everything to them. It is why they have been so successful. Their only mode of defence is attack, and that approach comes from the top, which means Horner, yes, but also Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s autocratic 80-year-old ‘adviser’ (the inverted commas are my own, intended to indicate the extent to which such an apparently innocuous job title underplays his enormous influence on the organisation). Equally, F1 insiders often characterise Adrian Newey as a shy and benign genius. He is indeed that but, when I was at McLaren, Ron Dennis always told me that he regarded Newey as the single most competitive person with whom he had ever worked – and Dennis had worked with Ayrton Senna, let us not forget. As such, it is no surprise that Newey ended up at Red Bull. Max Verstappen fits the bill, too.

Red Bull took its time to become a world championship-winning powerhouse, as almost all successful F1 teams do. In 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 it finished seventh, seventh, fifth and seventh in the constructors’ world championship. In the autumn of 2006 a rumour began to swirl around the world’s F1 paddocks to the effect that Marko was growing impatient, and that he was sounding out potential Horner replacements. One of the names being whispered was that of Flavio Briatore, who had led the Renault F1 team to world championship glory in 2005 and was on the verge of repeating the feat on the bounce. I duly ran a one-paragraph NIB (news in brief) in the news pages of the magazine I was editing, reporting it as interesting insider hearsay. Horner’s reaction was one of fury. During the Italian Grand Prix weekend at Monza he summoned me to his office inside the then new-ish Red Bull ‘energy station’, where I found him shaking with rage. “Your… job… is… to… write… facts,” he barked, staccato.

“It isn’t, actually,” I countered, as breezily as I could. “That isn’t how journalism works. Yes, journalism includes factual reporting, of course it does, but if you open any newspaper in the world what you’ll find alongside factual reporting is analysis and opinion, much of which consists of educated speculation. As long as it’s made clear in the writing that it’s analysis or opinion, and it isn’t libellous, it’s legit.” Our conversation went on for about five more minutes, and it is safe to say that it was not a meeting of minds. To his credit, the following week he invited me to dinner at the Orrery in London’s Marylebone Lane, where we enjoyed a fine meal and a much more friendly chat. He did not have to do that, and it is to his credit that he did.

In January 2008 I joined McLaren as its comms chief, which meant that thereafter Horner saw me as merely a bit-player within of one of his enemies — for, like everyone at Red Bull, his view of competition can be characterised by the maxim “If you’re not with me, you’re against me”, which modus operandi has been adopted by domineering bosses the world over but was in fact first said by Jesus Christ as reported in the Gospel of St Matthew. That being the case, whenever Horner and I would bump into each other over the next few years, we would nod and say hi, but that was about it. It is often that way with people who work for opposing F1 teams, even if they were chummy enough beforehand. Such is F1 life.

The last time I spoke to him was on the afternoon of Friday November 24 2022, in the Abu Dhabi paddock. I was by that time working as Aston Martin’s comms chief, and I had escorted our team principal Mike Krack to the FIA press conference, in which his fellow panellists had been McLaren’s Andrea Stella and, yes, Horner. As we all filed out afterwards, by chance I fell into step alongside the Red Bull boss. “Congratulations on a great season,” I said to him. “To win 16 grands prix [which would become 17 two days later], well, that’s impressive.”

He stopped dead, turned to face me, and shook me by the hand. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. You’re literally the first person from any other team who’s said that to me.” I had not been expecting so florid a reply – a muttered “Cheers” was probably more like what I would have been anticipating, had I been minded to hazard a guess. So, now, reflecting on our exchange, I reckon the explanation for his unusually generous reaction to what was a pretty humdrum compliment must surely be that the ruthlessness with which he and his cohorts have achieved what they have achieved has made his rivals unwilling to extend such normal courtesies to him. Or, to put it bluntly, not many F1 people like him very much.

Fast-forward a year and three months, during which period his team has enjoyed an even more successful season, winning an astonishing 21 grands prix, and his lustrous career looks to be about to continue in much the same vein, despite the extreme turbulence of the past few weeks. We may never know the details of what was alleged, and I am not about to end this column with a speculative NIB. A person must always be regarded as innocent until or unless proven guilty – and, by unambiguous contrast, Horner has been exonerated. Suffice it therefore to say that a scarily ambitious and prodigiously successful man now looks to be about to sate his scary ambition with further prodigious success.