Why Christian Horner’s shock firing from Red Bull won’t be felt immediately

Red Bull starts a new era in F1 this weekend, following the shock dismissal of former team boss Christian Horner after a 20-year reign.

Two days after the British Grand Prix, Horner was removed from his post as CEO and team principal of Red Bull Racing, replaced by Laurent Mekies.

How Red Bull is preparing for its new chapter

The abrupt change to the senior management structure of Red Bull Racing of two decades was made with little fanfare, two days after a difficult race at Silverstone played out with Max Verstappen left exposed by a low-downforce setup that was badly compromised by heavy rain falling throughout most of Sunday.

Summoned to a meeting in London, which was thought to be regarding another area of the business entirely, Horner was dismissed from his all-encompassing roles and replaced by Mekies; a promotion that the staff at Faenza are believed to have found before those at Milton Keynes.

Coinciding with Horner’s firing, two senior members of staff aligned to his axis of influence were called aside while attending a routine meeting, as initially reported by The Sun, with former chief marketing officer Oliver Hughes and group director of communications Paul Smith being escorted from the premises at Milton Keynes as their company-issued devices were taken away.

It’s left Red Bull Racing somewhat headless as the team gears up for its first race in Formula 1 without Horner overseeing the weekend, with various departments across the team currently having no definitive leader, and those stepping into the breach having little by way of guidance or support.

The exact reasons for Horner’s dismissal, and those of his lieutenants, are yet to be made clear by Red Bull GmbH, with only cursory and perfunctory messages of thanks issued via sterile press releases and social media posts. The logical theory is that it’s based on performance, with the RB21 clearly bested by McLaren’s MCL39, leaving the team unable to challenge for the Constructors’ Championship.

Added to that has been the will-he-won’t-he nature of Verstappen’s future, with the Dutch driver reluctant to publicly commit to the team that has made him a superstar over the past decade, although it’s believed this uncertainty is more focused on 2027, rather than ’26.

But it’s worth pointing out that, even in a year in which performance hasn’t been the class of the field, Verstappen has taken two victories and four pole positions. He remains a dark horse in the Drivers’ Championship, although the momentum behind the two McLaren drivers means retaining his crown will be difficult.

Mekies thus takes over the team roles vacated by Horner, a clear winner in the coup carried out mercilessly by Red Bull Racing’s Austrian overlords. The French engineer has been thrust into the roles of CEO and team boss, a role he was first promoted into at Red Bull’s second team Racing Bulls, with Horner’s influence, and he now faces a huge career challenge to maintain the momentum built by Horner at Red Bull Racing.

After all, Mekies’ background is built on the sporting and technical side of team leadership, begging the question of whether he is well-suited to a business-oriented role such as being a team or group CEO.

On the ground within the factory, the seizing of control by Austria is understood to have been met with widespread dismay and disbelief, with many employees believed to have been completely disheartened by the shock changes and the dismissive nature of the axing of well-liked bosses.

“In my opinion, he was the best TP [team principal] the sport has ever seen,” one workshop employee of Milton Keynes, there from the Jaguar days, said of Horner on LinkedIn.

“Despite his perhaps arrogant persona in front of the camera, he was a humble and genuine man and someone that all of us looked up to.

“As of now, it feels like the heart and soul have been ripped out of the team. It hasn’t, but that’s what the look on a lot of people’s faces would have you think.

“We’ll recover from this, as we have other problems, and I’m sure we’ll bounce back just as strongly as we have before. No team is built on just one person; it takes everyone.

“But there’s no doubt that right now, it feels like we’ve lost our leader and, with that, our identity.”

The unhappiness at Red Bull GmbH is believed to stem from uncertainty over what Red Bull Racing had become. The disconnect appears to be whether the squad was a Horner-led British organisation, with Austrian funding, or an Austrian team focused around Max Verstappen, that just so happened to be based in Britain with a British boss in charge.

The decisions taken by Red Bull CEO Oliver Mintzlaff in seizing control on behalf of GmbH, a move which Helmut Marko is understood to have played a prominent part in, appear to be an attempt at answering this question. With Horner out, the message is clear: Austria is in charge, and Horner’s control and influence are no more.

It begs the question of just how involved Verstappen and his camp were in this decision, with plenty of speculation that the four-time F1 World Champion was part of the pressure being applied on Mintzlaff to oust Horner; rumours which are understood to be wide of the mark.

How big an impact will Christian Horner’s firing have?

In theory, the overall performance capabilities of the team won’t change immediately.

After all, a single person – no matter how influential – has little effect on the overall direction and impetus of a team the size of Red Bull Racing. While individual results can be affected by the decision-making prowess of those in charge, the overall dynamic of momentum will continue for the rest of this season.

As such, Mekies takes over the ability to control the execution of a race weekend, but is taking over a structure that has been created under Horner. With the development of the RB21 ending by the summer break, the final 10 races of the season will slowly see Mekies’ influence grow, but short of tearing everything up and imposing his own structure, everything scored from here this year is still built upon Horner’s efforts.

Where the true impact of Horner’s dismissal, and Mekies’ promotion, will be felt will be over the next year or two. Horner’s role was not only about the here-and-now, but with an eye to the future. Under his remit, the creation and build-up of Red Bull Powertrains and the design direction for the revolutionary 2026 ruleset, spearheaded by Pierre Waché, mean it’s Horner’s fingerprints which will be all over the initial offering for 2026; deep-rooted effort that stems back over the last 18 months or so.

Realistically, it is only from when the development direction of the RB22 is being decided upon that the loss of Horner will be felt.

It’s also worth remembering that, aside from the car itself, the commercial environment created at Red Bull Racing, by way of Horner being F1’s answer to Alex Ferguson, could look very different for 2026. Sponsors eager to be associated with Horner’s Red Bull may be less interested in a Mekies-led operation, which is no slight against the Frenchman, merely indicative of the fact his predecessor’s ‘stardom’ eclipsed the confines of the F1 sphere.

In time, it may well play out that Red Bull’s decision to start afresh was the right one. After all, Horner’s appointment itself was questionable when Dietrich Mateschitz made a call to promote the unproven 31-year-old back in 2005; few could have foreseen the success that would ensue from such a decision.

Who is to say that Mekies might not similarly thrive, and vindicate decisions that, right now, appear to be knee-jerk and reactionary?

But, given this opportunity on such a big stage, Mekies faces a different challenge in that, unlike Horner’s early days, he is expected to bring about stability and success for a team accustomed to being at the very front. There is little time to find his feet and grow along with a team merely trying to disrupt the status quo, as Horner’s circumstances were almost two decades ago – nowadays, Red Bull is that status quo.

Handed the keys to Red Bull and given the lack of patience shown to Horner at a time when F1 is counting down the days until a huge rule change, why believe that Mekies will be treated any differently in 12-18 months if things aren’t going in the right direction?

The danger for Red Bull is that, in firing Horner, it has embarked upon an Alpine-esque route in which instability and uncertainty are the norm, rather than the exception. Mintzlaff himself is unproven in Formula 1, hailing from a marketing background and national football leagues, and has set about removing a manager who, over the course of two decades in Formula 1, has delivered countless successes and turned the team into an international sporting franchise associated with victory.

After all, Laurent Rossi, the former Alpine CEO, fell on his sword when his behaviour and decision-making merely led Alpine further into internal bickering and high-profile departures, with Renault CEO Luca de Meo choosing to sideline him into “special projects” unrelated to F1 in mid-2023 as Otmar Szafnauer and Alan Permane departed, while other high-profile resignations included Marcin Budkowski and Alain Prost.

It was a case of the bigger fish eating the smaller, and Mintzlaff now has put himself in the position where he will be left very exposed if the hurried and abrupt succession plan, which appears to be anything but planned out, fails to deliver marked success.

Mintzlaff and Red Bull GmbH have, ultimately, decided to take back control of the team which the late Mateschitz saw best to leave in Horner’s hands, the first major decision made by the new management attempting to put their own mark on a team that has celebrated countless successes over the years.

It’ll be a costly decision, given the pay-out Horner will receive with more than five years still remaining on his contract, with a low-end estimate already coming in at some £50-60 million.

Having taken back their toy, and leaving Horner out in the cold seeking a way back into F1, the big question raised by all this is whether Red Bull will come to regret the decision, in time.

After all, the financial cost of the separation, combined with the potential of freeing Horner up to join a rival squad, will pale into insignificance compared to the cost of potentially seeing the squad, one which Horner kept consistently at the sharp end, fade into the midfield entirely if the decisions made prove ineffective – particularly if Verstappen does decide to leave anyway.

But, for now, Red Bull Racing will likely continue in a similar vein as it has all year, capable of taking occasional pole positions and victories but lacking the final few percent needed to consistently beat McLaren, all while building towards a future created by Horner, but without the benefit of his influence and experience.

Read Next: Five genius technical solutions we’ve seen so far in F1 2025