Red Bull Porsche rejection pays off with historic F1 engine victory

In a composite image, Max Verstappen is seen looking at a cracked Porsche badge to a Red Bull background — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Stories

Red Bull vindicated after extraordinary Porsche F1 deal collapse

More money in the 'Christian Horner was right' jar

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Wednesday 7 October 2026 20:45

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Max Verstappen's latest win for Red Bull at the Bahrain Grand Prix was no ordinary success for the F1 team.

Not just because it was the four-time world champion breaking the team's longest winning drought since he joined them in 2016 at 15 races. No, something far more significant than that.

This was the first Grand Prix victory for the Red Bull Powertrains project... at least while not working with Honda... and if you concede there is some collaboration with Ford in there.

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What we cannot deny is that this is a Red Bull power unit, built inside their own factory. They are doing a lot more things on their own now than when Honda were providing the stabilisers.

F1 HEADLINES: Christian Horner gets £66m Red Bull payout as Marko issues 'shameful' verdict

Christian Horner's RBPT vision

But as Red Bull look towards an apparently bright future, in total control of their F1 destiny, it is worth remembering that things could have turned out very differently.

Five years ago, where F1's latest winning engine was built, there was nothing. The whole concept of a Red Bull engine was the figment of an imagination, not least from then team boss Christian Horner.

Horner had already grown weary of Renault during the mid-2010s for them not being able to produce an engine fit enough to power an Adrian Newey chassis. Their divorce at the end of 2018 was brutal.

Honda followed, and while they helped Red Bull reach the top again in 2021 with Verstappen's first title victory, they too pulled out that year on a full-time basis.

Horner had correctly identified that not having an in-house engine they could control was a weakness, and so the plan to build their own was born.

Interestingly during 2022, while Red Bull were already in the process of producing their own engines, Porsche peered out from behind the curtain, looking to get involved with this F1 project.

Porsche had not been in F1 since 1991 when they approached Red Bull in 2022

Porsche attempt Red Bull purchase

Porsche hadn't been seen in F1 since being sent packing by the Footwork-Arrows team in 1991 for building appalling engines. They had earlier been successful with McLaren between 1983 and 1987 during the turbo era.

Weighing up the prospect of an F1 entry in 2026, Porsche looked at the soft-launch approach, and that was to buy a 50 per cent stake in Red Bull Technology - which was basically Red Bull F1. This was reportedly something the late Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz was open to.

Now this may not sound like something Horner wanted given the whole point of building RBPT in the first place, and he had concerns about the 50/50 deal alongside Newey and Helmut Marko, but despite that this deal very nearly got done.

So much so, that it was being treated as F1's worst kept secret. Many were expecting the deal to be announced at the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix at the start of July.

That moment came and went, and then nothing else for weeks afterwards. Horner maintains that it never went as far with Porsche over talks of a buy-in.

During this time, Honda got wind of Porsche's approach and started showing greater interest with Red Bull (which spectacularly ended with them going with Aston Martin, and forcing Red Bull down the Ford route.)

Red Bull hesitate

But this also presented Red Bull with crucial evidence over why a Porsche collab might not have worked.

Porsche were delaying on their Red Bull decision, having been waiting on the announcement of the 2026 F1 regulations, mostly due to it needing to be signed off by the board of Volkswagen - Porsche's owners.

It was a potential sign of things to come. Every decision having to go through a board and thus inserting crucial delays into the process.

It happened with Toyota's Germany base having to report back to Japan, while Red Bull's previous guise as Jaguar under Ford ownership had similar issues with the Ford board in the USA. Issues that could be fixed in moments took weeks, if not months.

In the end, having got cold feet at the idea, Red Bull were not willing to sell any of the company and Porsche were not interested in having a commercial rights deal on the powertrains (similar to what Ford eventually agreed.)

Christian Horner wanted in-house engines for Red Bull and Max Verstappen

Horner gets what he wants

The deal collapsed in September 2022, and it set Red Bull on a path of independence that has now rewarded them with their engine's first ever F1 win.

After the Porsche deal collapsed Horner said: “What we were interested in is, when you’re building a power unit entity from scratch, with an OEM, what could they potentially bring to the party that we didn’t have access to?

“Having done our due diligence, we felt that actually we were in good shape.

“And with the recruitment that we’ve made, technically, we don’t feel at any real disadvantage to our competitors.”

Horner recruited from Mercedes, Ferrari and just about any team with engine nous to give the project its best chance of succeeding. It may well be his lasting legacy.

Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

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F1 Red Bull Max Verstappen Christian Horner