Adrian Newey F1 News: How the Horner saga has cost Red Bull their championship-winning 'MVP'

Adrian Newey and Christian Horner — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Opinion

How the Horner saga has cost Red Bull their championship-winning 'MVP'

GPFans Editor-in-Chief Stuart Hodge believes Red Bull will live to regret their choices

Stuart Hodge

Saturday 27 April 2024 16:00

"The hottest love has the coldest end."

So wrote the philosopher Socrates and the prophetic Greek's words could not ring truer when it comes to the current miserable episode we're witnessing with F1's best team.

Since Christian Horner became embroiled in off-track scandal, something just hasn't been right for Adrian Newey and now the aerodynamic genius will seek to apply his talents elsewhere - a brutal loss for Red Bull.

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Reports have confirmed that the Horner saga -- which has dominated the narrative despite Newey producing another rocket ship set to provide a third consecutive drivers' and constructors' championship double for Red Bull -- as the reason that the 65-year-old wants to go.

Few could blame him after his outstanding work in his role as Chief Technology Officer for the Milton Keynes-based team threatens to be undermined by matters not relating at all to racing.

Is Adrian Newey leaving Red Bull?

Red Bull had choices. Everyone knows that there's been a colossal internal power struggle since mercurial founder Dietrich Mateschitz died in 2022 but that cannot legislate for the team failing to identify that they were about to lose F1's most valuable talent and acting accordingly - or worse, knowing they would and deciding to let matters reach that same conclusion.

Horner, for all he has been team principal since the Red Bull's inception and is very much the identifiable face of the team, is not going to build a car capable of winning titles. Newey, on the other hand, has been making a living out of doing for decades.

After building the RB19, one of the best Formula 1 cars of all-time which carried Red Bull to a historic season last year where they failed to win only one grand prix out of 23, Newey has delivered another ridiculously imperious machine once again.

This time, he really took the biscuit by taking the concept the team's biggest rival, Mercedes, fumbled horribly with; repurposing it his own way; and delivering a car which smashes its rivals once again.

He is the MVP of the sport, the person who can take a team from being ordinary or just above average to being a team capable of delivering race wins and championships.

Horner, on the other hand, is a man who is dealing with a lot from a personal standpoint and whose job is made exponentially easier by having Newey's hardware powering his drivers.

What next for Horner and Newey?

Regardless of the denouement of the situation with Horner, who now faces the prospect of the female employee within the team that accused him of 'inappropriate behaviour' presenting evidence before a leading English KC (King's Counsel) lawyer, Red Bull will be worse off for losing their guru.

In the current market, he is irreplaceable and no amount of resource can account for his midas touch and boundless imagination when it comes to design.

Even worse for Horner and Red Bull, they may have to come up against him working with a rival - just in time for the regulation changes entering 2026 and that is something they may well live to regret.

Red Bull Max Verstappen F1 Christian Horner Adrian Newey