Christian Horner's dismissal comes a year and a half too late

It's the Friday before the Grand Prix of Bahrain when the attention of all journalists in the media center no longer goes to the TV screens, but to the laptop. The free practice suddenly doesn't matter anymore, as an anonymous whistleblower leaks a pile of alleged WhatsApp conversations between Horner and his former assistant.

Horner claims to be innocent, is acquitted twice by a court, but the legal case is still ongoing. It causes an internal divide at Red Bull Racing between 'Team Horner' and ‘Team Austria’. The Austrian branch of Red Bull wants to get rid of Horner immediately, but the Thai majority shareholder Chalerm Yoovidhya keeps him protected.

Horner wins the races with his team, so why would you fire the man? Where at any other company the CEO would be immediately out on the street, the stakes in sports are just a bit different. As long as you're winning, you have friends, and so Red Bull keeps their team boss.

It's at the expense of important members of Red Bull Racing. The biggest name is Adrian Newey. The lead designer draws his conclusions, has no interest in the power struggle between Helmut Marko and Christian Horner, and departs. Horner, in turn, tries to oust Marko from the team but is thwarted by Max Verstappen.

Marko stays, but is critical of Horner on a weekly basis, just as Jos Verstappen also clearly states that Horner needs to step down. In a year and a half, the trio regularly sits down together, but real peace never arises.

Following Newey, Jonathan Wheatley also leaves Red Bull Racing. He seizes the opportunity to become the team boss of Sauber/Audi, a chance he did not get while Horner remained. Anyone seeing Wheatley work at Sauber now knows that he would have been the perfect successor to bring back the peace.

A year and a half later, the atmosphere within Red Bull has significantly deteriorated. There is still a divide within the team and even as a journalist, you have to be careful whom you talk to. If you talk too much with people from 'Team Verstappen', then you can forget about a friendly chat with anyone from 'Team Horner'.

The toxic atmosphere has also led to Max Verstappen being on the brink of leaving the team. Max Verstappen is fed up with the unrest behind the scenes, and rightly so. Team Verstappen looks enviously at a team like Mercedes, where everyone works together towards a single goal. Something that is no longer the case at Red Bull.

There, the departure of key members is dismissed as unimportant. Replacements for Wheatley and Newey were already prepared, but in practice they simply weren't good enough. The fact the car was hardly developed anymore was denied by Horner, who had become adept at trivializing the issue.

The performance alone is a reason to fire a team boss, but actually, it comes a year and a half too late. Horner should have been fired back then, especially when the performance was good. That would have been the right time for the team to maintain calm for 2025 and 2026, keep the right people on board, and set up a competitive car. Now it's too late and Laurent Mekies is faced with the impossible task of conducting a complete reset in a short time while keeping Max Verstappen happy. Good luck.