Christian Horner dumped by girlfriend after David Beckham-esque move

Red Bull boss Christian Horner did not always have it easy in his motorsport team management career, even losing himself a girlfriend with how he spent his first paycheck.

With Horner as team principal, having served in that role for the entirety of Red Bull’s existence since 2005, the team has gone on to become one of the most successful in Formula 1 history with six Constructors’ and seven Drivers’ Championship titles to their name.

Before any of this though, Horner cut his teeth in management by creating and driving for his Arden team in Formula 3000…on borrowed money.

Christian Horner dumped after splashing out on a Porsche

Horner spoke of the magnitude of this “burden” as he was now responsible for his Arden team member’s “livelihoods”, maxing out his credit cards to a point where the slightest piece of financial bad luck, such as him crashing the car, could tip him “over the edge”.

Horner gave up racing after his second season with Arden to focus on the management side, and when some serious cash finally came in, a cheque for £60,000, rather than spending that on the mortgage which his girlfriend’s mother pushed for, instead he bought a Porsche and soon found himself single.

Speaking on the Eff Won with DRS podcast, Horner said: “I had a girlfriend at the time and I remember her mother going, ‘You need to be thinking of being with somebody else, you need a guy with a proper job that’s going to be able to get a mortgage, going to buy a house’.

“First paycheck I ever got, I went and bought a Porsche, I’ve shown no responsibility at this point. I was thinking, ‘You know what, if all goes wrong, then at least I’ve given it a go’.

“I got £60,000 out of a deal when I stopped racing and the first thing I did was go and buy a car. And that was when the girlfriend dumped me, or the mother told her to dump me.”

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Christian Horner’s wife indirectly bankrolled him

Horner’s move was compared by podcast host Dax Shepard to that of football legend David Beckham, who admitted in his documentary that he blew a $50,000 cheque from Adidas on a BMW M3.

Thankfully for Horner, he has had better luck in relationships since then, marrying Geri Halliwell, a member of the iconic pop group The Spice Girls, in 2015.

Long before that though, she was indirectly supplying vital funds to her future husband via a cake business that sponsored Horner.

At the time, Horner was driving around with cartoon character ‘Dennis the Menace’ plastered on his car, the sponsor believing this deal, rather than their licence for Spice Girls celebrations cakes, would be the true money-spinner.

As it turned out, they were wrong, and made sure Horner was financially rewarded for that positive surprise.

Horner said: “The funny thing was that when I was driving, I had a sponsor and they made cakes, they made like celebration cakes that they were selling to a supermarket.

“And they said, ‘We’ve signed two licences, one with a cartoon character called Dennis the Menace, to make these cakes with Dennis the Menace on, and we signed one with this girl band called The Spice Girls, but we think the Dennis the Menace cake is…so put the Dennis the Menace on your car.

“So I had Dennis the Menace on my car and they said, ‘If the cake sales go okay, we can pay you a little bit more money’.

“And so anyway, they started selling the cakes and I remember getting a call saying, ‘Look, the cake sales are going well, but wow, the girl cakes are flying, so we can actually pay you a little bit more money’.

“So indirectly, my wife at a very early age, she contributed to my career.”

These days it is sponsors jostling to work with Red Bull, who made it back-to-back Constructors’ and Drivers’ title doubles in F1 2023.

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