Red Bull's second act just opened after Christian Horner axing... Now what?

This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix marked Red Bull Racing’s first without Christian Horner manning the tiller. For a team that’s been kicking around for two decades, that’s quite a mark.

What did the team look like without him? Well, basically the same. If you were looking for some sort of curse being lifted, you were looking in the wrong place. Max Verstappen couldn’t catch and pass Charles Leclerc given 30-odd laps and pretty equal tyres, and Yuki Tsunoda couldn’t score points. They ran the Red Bull 2025 playbook.

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There was one notable fillip though, with Red Bull placing both of their senior team’s cars in the top 10 of the grid as well as their junior team’s duo. Doesn’t sound that hard? Well, it’s the first time this year it’s happened, and only the second time it’s been particularly close. For the curious, is was Yuki Tsunoda’s 12th in Monaco that was the closest the team came to breaking this.

In the race itself though, it was like Horner never left. Strategy decisions which didn’t even get heavily analysed on TV because they just didn’t matter? Check. Red Bull out of the points? Check. Most of the chatter all weekend being about behind the scenes revelations? Check, and Red Bull practically have a copyright on that now.

Horner up with F1 team boss legends

That’s what the team’s first post-Horner weekend looked like, but it’s worth making clear just how astonishing his run with the team was.

It’s not just that Horner was an outlier in the modern age, Augustus to his contemporaries’ Gordian II. Going all the way back in the sport’s history, as F1 75 has invited us to do all year, reveals just how unusual the second most famous HAB (what, you’ll accept WAG but not this?) has been.

The longest serving de-facto team principal in the history of the sport was the legendary Frank Williams. While the term was almost certainly not in use when the team debuted in 1977, it certainly was when he stepped down from the board in 2012 – specifically retaining the title of...yes, team principal.

Ken Tyrrell and Ron Dennis also outlasted him, but in the history of the sport...that’s it. That speaks to a lot about Horner, but so does this. Williams was in his late 70s when the team was sold and he relinquished his role. Tyrrell stayed on until near his death in his 70s too, while Dennis ducked out ‘just’ in his early 60s.

The point here is twofold. Firstly that Horner was unusually young by the sport’s standards when he got handed the job, and secondly that he was almost singularly good at it. In this instant gratification age, only one other team principal on the grid has even been in place for three years – and that’s Toto Wolff, who has a significant ownership stake in the team.

Why did key Red Bull staff desert Christian Horner?

The twist in all of this statting, though? When you’re 51 years old and 18 months removed from authoring the most dominant team season in the sport’s history, you have to really, really plunge the team head-first down the toilet to get sacked off mid-season.

We’ll probably never know the full findings of the inquiries into allegations of inappropriate behaviour to a member of Red Bull staff, but we don’t need chapter and verse on the accusations and findings to know that the whole saga led to discomfort within the team.

That appears to have led – directly or otherwise – to some high profile and high impact members of staff all taking the decision to head out the door in the last year or so. If you think that shows now, wait until the necessarily patchwork group have a crack at the new regs coming in for 2026.

It’s impossible to extricate what the team do this year from Horner’s influence. Hell, given how early teams (legally) started on their 2026 development, expect his fingerprints to be on next year’s car too. But no longer.

Red Bull’s first No-Horner race weekend: 5/10

This article is from our brand new GPFans newsletter. We’ll be with you pre-race, post-race and in between with things you may not find on the website. This article is a taster for things to come so be sure not to miss out on all the others by subscribing below.

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