Christian Horner F1 News: Former team principal comments could provide a route back into the sport

Christian Horner

Former team principal comments could give Christian Horner a route back into F1

Could there be an opening?

Chris Deeley

Tuesday 18 August 2026 08:15 Updated: 08:59

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Christian Horner has been sniffing around an F1 return for a little while now since being relieved of his duties at Red Bull last July, but hasn't yet seemed to come across the perfect spot to make his return.

It's been widely reported that Horner is unlikely to sign off on any deal which doesn't see him acquire some manner of ownership stake which, coupled with the fact that he won't be returning to Red Bull (or Racing Bulls), leaves him with relatively few options on the grid.

Mercedes and McLaren are non-starters, while Ferrari would have to see him give up on the idea of any ownership stake – and would require the Scuderia to decide that their recent improvements and title challenge under Fred Vasseur aren't actually good enough for them.

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That takes the top five teams in the standings off the board. Oops. Horner has been linked with Alpine for most of the year, but the situation with Otro Capital's stake currently looks gnarled up enough to muddy the waters for the time being. Aston Martin and a reunion with Adrian Newey would be tricky, and Cadillac chief Dan Towriss said last summer: "There have been no talks with Christian Horner, no plans to do that."

Then again, in the same breath he said that he backed Graeme Lowden '100 per cent' before firing him less than a year later. Maybe Cadillac aren't as off the table as they seemed.

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Could Haas provide a re-entry point for Horner?

Another option comes from Cadillac's American compatriots Haas. It's public knowledge that Horner had 'exploratory talks' with them last year – Ayo Komatsu confirmed as much, but then added 'it is finished' and refused to go into the talks in any depth.

The best part of a year later, Horner is still on the fringes of the sport – posting an Instagram video on Monday to hype up his autumn book tour of the UK – and former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is on the High Performance Podcast suggesting that team owner Gene Haas may have lost interest in the sport.

If that is the case (and it's a big 'if', given the previous breakdown in talks with Horner and Haas' continued support of the F1 team which carries his name), the time could be right for Horner and some kind of consortium to come in and, if not completely buy Haas out, then take a good chunk of the operation out of the American's hands.

Steiner: I still haven't understood what Haas wants from his team

Steiner was fairly scathing about his old boss' F1 operation on the podcast, saying: "With Gene Haas, you'd need to have him here on your podcast to ask him what he wanted to do [with the team] because I still haven't understood.

"Being in a sport, for me being somewhere competitive, I want to be a winner. That is what I aim for.. Only one can achieve it, I'm fully aware of that, you know, but you make the maximum effort, not just [aim] to be a participant.

"It's the same in life – you don't just want to be a participant, you want to be a part of life, you want to enjoy yourself.

"In the beginning there was a clear plan – it's difficult to get into F1, as we now can see with Cadillac it's not easy. We had success pretty early, we then had a few bad years as well, you know, 2019, but that's normal in a sport, you cannot have always good years.

"You are competing with the best of the best and at some stage, I don't know, maybe he lost interest in the sport, maybe he thought it should be done different, and the relationship just deteriorated I would say, over time."

F1 Christian Horner Haas Guenther Steiner Gene Haas