Red Bull ‘better off’ without Christian Horner? Guenther Steiner explains why

Red Bull is a team “better off” with Laurent Mekies at the helm rather than Christian Horner, in the opinion of Guenther Steiner.

Explaining his stance, Steiner – the former Red Bull technical operations director and Haas team principal – said Red Bull is a “calmer” team under Mekies. However, Steiner says the Frenchman cannot be credited for Red Bull’s recent resurgence.

Guenther Steiner sees Red Bull benefit in Christian Horner split

It was shortly following the 2025 British Grand Prix that Red Bull announced Horner’s removal as team boss with immediate effect. He was replaced by former Racing Bulls team principal Laurent Mekies.

Come August, updated company records showed that Horner had been removed as a director of Red Bull’s various F1-related operations.

The final ties between Horner and Red Bull were severed on 22 September. The exact financial details of the settlement reached are unconfirmed, but PlanetF1.com understands a figure in the region of $100 million (£74.2m) was agreed with Horner.

During a recent appearance on the Red Flags podcast, the topic of Horner and Red Bull was brought up in a segment where Steiner must respond to a prompt, either with ‘gas’, to display his approval with the statement, or ‘brake’, to challenge it.

The prompt was: “Red Bull is better off with Mekies than Horner.”

“Gas,” Steiner responded. “And the reason is, it seems the team is calmer.

“Before, it was every week and there was a news story, they didn’t get on, this guy didn’t get one with this one. An the moment, they seem to be working in harmony, and therefore, I think they are better off.”

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It was a challenging final 18 months for Horner off and on the track with Red Bull. Under Mekies, the team has returned to winning ways, Max Verstappen claiming impressive back-to-back victories at the Italian and Azerbaijan GPs.

Nonetheless, Steiner does not believe Mekies can take the credit for Red Bull’s upturn in form.

“I’m not putting this one down, the results they had the last two races, to Christian being gone,” Steiner clarified. “I just put it down to, there was unhappiness, but that was now for one-and-a-half years in the team. And now, it seems to be working pretty smooth.

“And obviously, Laurent, he is a good leader. He’s very calm. He doesn’t get involved in politics and stuff like this. He’s just doing his job. And before, there was just, like, always friction in the team between different parties, and I never understood between who it was.

“So, I think therefore, they are better off. Therefore, it’s gas, yeah.

“They’re not worse off. They’re winning races with Laurent there. It’s not down to Laurent, in my opinion. I wouldn’t give him credit for that, but I would give him credit for calming everything down inside the team.”

Steiner added: “I don’t credit the results, the last two wins. They are not because Laurent is there. I think the team in general is better off now for the future.

“The results, you cannot come in and the next day having wins. It cannot happen.”

While Steiner does not give Mekies credit for Red Bull’s improved form, Verstappen certainly did following his Monza win.

However, Mekies hushed the praise, when asked by PlanetF1.com to assess his level of contribution as an engineer to Red Bull‘s Monza triumph.

“The answer is a very easy one. The level of contribution is zero,” he bluntly said.

“And I’m not joking either. It’s 1500 people working on making that car faster.

“So these are the addition of this talent that makes the car faster, that makes the hundredths and makes the thousandths, makes the setup options available and makes a new component available. So the short answer is zero.

“Our only role is to make sure that the talents we have are put in the right conditions to express the talent as best they can.

“That’s the only thing we are doing. That’s the extent of the contribution, and that’s it. Nothing more.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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