How Red Bull 2.0 began life without Christian Horner at the Belgian GP

Red Bull came through its first race weekend without Christian Horner in Belgium, but it will take time for his presence to fade.

The removal of Horner from his roles as CEO and team principal meant last weekend’s race at Spa-Francorchamps was the first in Red Bull’s history without him in charge.

Red Bull moves on without Christian Horner

There was a strange atmosphere in the F1 paddock over the Belgian Grand Prix.

Sitting in its usual place was the familiar brown Red Bull Energy Station, the energy in the building was markedly different from the norm as the weekend got started on Thursday with the media day.

After the bombshell that came shortly after the British Grand Prix, confirming the removal of Horner after over 20 years and 400 races in charge, the level of interest in the Energy Station, and how different the vibe would be, meant that it was a particularly eager pack of journalists walking into the building for the media sessions.

These are usually quite tepid affairs but, given the context, the opinions of the Racing Bulls and Red Bull camps were particularly pertinent at Spa.

The arrival of Laurent Mekies, the team’s new boss and the main benefactor of Red Bull GmbH’s decision to sever ties with Horner, also caught the attention of the photographers waiting outside, as the Frenchman good-naturedly greeted friends and colleagues – whether from his previous or new stable – as he walked into the Station.

What quickly became evident is that, even internally, there appeared to be no warning that a seismic change was planned.

Both Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson revealed they had found out at roughly the same time as everyone else, although both quickly insisted that the change in Red Bull team boss had next to no effect on them.

As juniors in the Red Bull stable, they each offered sensible, well-considered answers that conveyed little by way of personal opinion – perhaps unsurprising, given that only Lawson has directly worked with Horner and, even at that, only briefly.

The Kiwi explained that he hadn’t picked up on tensions between Horner and other team members and had been as surprised as anyone about the change of team boss.

Mekies appeared in the FIA press conference on Friday, fielding question after question about his promotion, where he was asked about where he has seen areas in which Red Bull may have gone off the rails over the last 18 months.

“You do not see weaknesses,” he said.

“You see a lot of desire from everyone to get that Red Bull energy, perhaps to reduce the noise outside, just to concentrate on racing. That’s what you see, and that’s what we are going to try to do together.”

It’s in this answer that Mekies perhaps put into words just what Red Bull GmbH has set out to achieve in removing Horner – reducing the noise that has surrounded the team for some 18 months.

Performance may be playing a part, of course, although the full reasoning behind the decision is yet to emerge.

Off the back of such a big decision, it’s no surprise that CEO Oliver Mintzlaff was on the ground, working closely with Helmut Marko, while former communications head Eric Silbermann was there in an advisory capacity to oversee the communications department following the firing of former group comms director Paul Smith.

Within the Energy Station, it was clear is that some of the tensions that have existed in the Red Bull hospitality unit have disappeared – it would be difficult for this not to happen given there has been a clear winner in the internal power struggle that has existed for such a long time.

The removal of one side of this battle means that the tension is noticeably less palpable, but Horner’s popularity as a boss means it will take some time for feelings of loyalty to fade.

What Red Bull staff had to say about Christian Horner

It’s perhaps for this reason that there’s a sense of guarded caution in hushed conversations, a presentation of brave faces amongst those left saddened by what was a merciless execution.

Amongst the rank and file, it’s difficult to find anyone willing to badmouth Horner.

One summation was that “It’s just not the same without him”, while another said Horner had “deserved better.”

One long-serving employee of Red Bull said Horner was “the best boss I’ve ever had” and that his willingness to be the villain and go to war on behalf of his team meant “he had a team willing to go to war on his behalf in return.”

Amongst a cross-section of staff, the most damning assessment of Horner was that “he needed to go, because someone did.”

But personnel voicing loyalties aloud is futile now, perhaps even damaging or dangerous for their careers.

After all, expressing allegiances to a regime cut out in a palace coup yields no reward, and in a team eager to move on under its new leadership, Horner will likely have little by way of public support from his former colleagues.

One who was willing to speak on-record about the situation was chief engineer Paul Monaghan, who has been with the squad since 2006.

“I won’t dump the truth. It was a shock to me… Sad,” he told media including PlanetF1.com.

“Christian’s put a large chunk of his working life into the team, and we’ve all together as a team we’ve enjoyed a huge amount of success, perhaps unwarranted to some views, whatever. What’s done is done.

“And say thank you to Christian for everything he did for personally for me and for this team.”

How Red Bull’s feelings towards Christian Horner had evolved

What’s evident from the actions of GmbH is that the move has had the effect of diffusing tensions, by way of the removal of an axis of power that had seemingly become increasingly at odds with the desires of the parent company.

Certainly, the move is decisive – and brave – given the pedigree GmbH has chosen to part with.

There can be little doubt that the decision to oust Horner is a clear-cut line in the sand, an attempt at rectifying a bitter, festering situation in one fell swoop.

In this regard, Mintzlaff not backing away from making a tough call is meritorious, a sincere attempt at righting the ship, even if the medium to long-term outcome can’t possibly be determined at this point.

The winners of the power struggle will no doubt enjoy the victory and, in the short-term, there’s little reason to doubt that the in-fighting and squabbling will give way to a calmer and lighter atmosphere, particularly given the indications are that Horner’s removal has placated the Verstappens to the point of committing for F1 2026, even if the camp hadn’t explicitly called for his removal.

“It’s about the can, not the man,” is an explanation offered for the events of recent weeks.

The feeling is that Horner’s control and influence had grown such that the team had been eclipsed by him, a global sports franchise increasingly associated with him instead of the brand, with Horner unafraid of butting heads with a faction that had grown weary of him.

There’s a sense of inevitability in how things have played out.

Ever since the death of team founder Dietrich Mateschitz in late 2022, a man who saw fit to leave everything in Horner’s hands, the in-fighting just became worse and worse – to the point where the parent company has finally intervened.

The squabbling, which became public knowledge as Jos Verstappen called for Horner’s job last year, had appeared to be easing in recent times, but the back-to-back poor weekends in Austria and Silverstone – two home races, one of which was attended by the Thai majority shareholders in the Yoovidhya family – contributed to a decision that has resulted in GmbH pulling the trigger on a reset.

In isolation, this year’s performance dip is minor stuff against a bigger picture.

After all, the RB21 is only clearly bested by the McLaren and, in the very first race after Horner’s departure, Verstappen took victory in the Belgian Sprint to add to his two grand prix victories in F1 2025.

But in a team that had become fractured last year and, against the potential threat of losing Max Verstappen, one side had to fall.

Losing the Verstappens to a rival would likely also have cost Red Bull Helmut Marko and, coinciding with a time period in which Horner had not demonstrated the technical department is fully on top of things, the Briton was always likely to be the victim in such an ultimatum.

Of course, as I’ve written about already, whether this proves to be the right decision is something only time will tell.

Verstappen himself spoke on Thursday afternoon, and was typically pragmatic, saying his personal relationship with Horner won’t change, and that the decisions made weren’t his; he’s just “the driver and they run the team.”

While correct, it’s a different stance from Verstappen coming to Marko’s defence at the peak of the initial tensions following the internal investigation into Horner at the start of 2024.

Verstappen made it clear then that Marko was critical for his own happiness at Red Bull.

The Dutch driver conspicuously didn’t do the same for Horner and this suggests that Verstappen viewed Marko, not Horner, as more integral to the success of the team.

The task facing Laurent Mekies at Red Bull

Thoughts on the decision are obviously subjective, but Mekies’ appointment is one aimed at restoring peace and bringing back stability.

Many will celebrate the ousting of Horner after years of seeing him lean into the pantomime villain role on behalf of his team – a role he played with aplomb, but won him few friends, particularly in the eyes of the public.

With his removal, F1 has lost one of its more entertaining characters; it’s difficult to imagine Mekies will embrace the political s**t-stirring battleground quite as much as Horner did with his rival team bosses over the years.

For Red Bull, the task begins to justify the removal of the man who has brought every single one of its championship wins, starting with the impact Mekies can make.

While unproven as a team boss at the sharp end, Mekies is well-liked, charismatic, and will likely learn to embrace the spotlight as a tool at his disposal in time.

While affable and seemingly laid-back, those close to him say he has a steely edge when needed – a pre-requisite to succeed as Red Bull’s team boss and CEO, especially in the latter role given his background is more on the sporting administrative side rather than the business.

His first task has been to meet with as much of the team as possible, as he explained: “It’s an incredible team. They didn’t win by luck or by mistakes. They won because of the accumulation of talents that there is in the buildings.

“Every small box you open and you look at how they go about a given topic or another thing, every time you say, ‘Wow, that’s really nice.’

“And that’s all coming from the people there at all levels that have been doing amazing jobs for all these years.”

Moving up to a race-winning (if not quite championship-capable) team this year from Racing Bulls, Mekies explained where he sees the difference in abilities.

“It’s fair to say that the game is changing when you try and fight for wins, when you’re trying to fight for championships, and how extreme you have to go in every single area to grab the last bit of performance,” he said.

“That means you need to make some very bold choices, very bold decisions.

“This is what you find in all these small boxes we were talking about before – how extreme the team goes about every single detail in order to eventually get that ultimate performance that you need for the sort of ambition the team has.”

These extremes are areas Horner took his team and Mekies coming in to discover them for the first time means he faces a stern challenge to keep Red Bull at the front.

That is “an honour and a privilege,” he says, and there’s no doubt that the pressure is on to keep Milton Keynes near the front, while trying to find those last few percent again for the future.

The coup de grace of Horner is complete, the band-aid ripped off, and the Belgian Grand Prix illustrated that Red Bull 2.0 has begun.

On-track, the results didn’t play out much differently that usual, with Verstappen following up his Sprint victory with fourth-place in the race, while Tsunoda finished 11th after a decent qualifying session.

One potential change to the norm was that Tsunoda was given the upgraded floor that was originally supposed to be Verstappen’s spare, a decision which could have been costly if Verstappen had picked up any floor damage during qualifying as fitting another floor, of a different spec, would have triggered a pitlane start.

There is an eagerness to put the previous era quickly behind it, and, for the moment at least, peace will descend as the clean slate of Mekies sets about creating his own legacy.

As one senior team source put it to me, the desire now is to bring back some of the energy that marked Red Bull out in its early years in the sport, that sense of rock & roll rebellion and fun that made Milton Keynes the upstart outfit that annoyed a sport stuck in its ways 20 years ago.

Read Next: Brad Pitt F1 movie hits huge milestone with re-release uncovered