Kieran is a freelance Formula 1 journalist for GPblog, covering breaking news, live race blogs and feature content across the F1 calendar. An NQJ-qualified journalist with more than a decade of experience, he has previously written for publications including MailOnline, the Manchester Evening News and the Eastern Daily Press.
Christian Horner has admitted that Helmut Marko made his life 'incredibly difficult' at times during their years together at Red Bull and that he would sometimes have to clean up the Austrian's 'mess'.
Marko, formerly Red Bull's motorsport advisor, initially helped Horner by introducing him to Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz. But Horner said their relationship changed as the team evolved, particularly after Mateschitz's death in 2022.
Speaking on the Up to Speed podcast, Horner said: "I was always very respectful for what he what he'd done and and did, but sometimes he made life incredibly difficult and that's life. After Dietrich passed, the function that he had essentially wasn't there anymore.
"So then you get people that are sort of just hanging on and of course, you know, the business was moving on. It was evolving. Nothing stands still. It has to keep it has to keep evolving. And so, you know, dynamics change."
Horner reveals he had to clean up Marko's mess
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Horner also admitted that he would sometimes have to clean up Marko's 'mess' at Red Bull, highlighting how Adrian Newey would go 'bananas' at upgrade details that the media would get hold of.
Asked by cost-host Naomi Schiff whether he felt like he had to clean up messes made by Marko, he said: "You know, sometimes, yes. And there there periods where it was was fine, it was great, and everybody knew what their roles were. I think where it started to get a little bit messy was, as I say, after Dietrich passed.
He added: "And then, in the desire to become relevant, knowledge was that currency. And so, I would have engineers coming in, Adrian would go bananas at something that was in the media about an upgrade and, you know, he's so secretive about that kind of thing, that suddenly we were doing all our talking through the media, and then inevitably you end up having to mop elements of it up.
"I felt it portrayed the team in a way that wasn't true to our character of who we were as an organisation. Certainly the people within Milton Keynes didn't recognise that. So you're having to balance all those dynamics."
Horner's appearance on the Up to Speed podcast comes ahead of the release of his upcoming autobiography Drive. In the autobiography he revealed how Marko played a role in blocking pursuits of Charles Leclerc and Fernando Alonso during Horner's time as team principal.
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