JONATHAN McEVOY: Is the occasion over Christian Horner?

It was just a few weeks in the past that Christian Horner partied the night time away in Mayfair, a shock bash at Mount St restaurant organised by his Spice Girl spouse, Geri.

It was his fiftieth birthday, a perform barely delayed due to his Formula One duties as crew principal of the Red Bull crew who dominated final season, successful all however one of many 22 rounds, and the spirit of enjoyment may hardly have been merrier as Gary Barlow, Sir Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood serenaded the A-List supper.

Bernie Ecclestone and his Brazilian spouse Fabiana Flosi have been additionally there. The singers among the many crowd belted out choruses of Happy Birthday and the half-centurion visitor of honour minimize the grand three-tier cake on which the legend ‘World Champion’ was written. ‘I thought we were forming a band,’ Horner joked.

In December he was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire, recognition of his achievement in overseeing two durations of success on the crew, the second of which ended Mercedes’ lengthy interval of Lewis Hamilton-led dominance in 2021.

But the gloss of these excessive factors had worn skinny yesterday with information that Horner is beneath inner investigation on the Austrian-owned fizzy drinks firm, of which Red Bull Racing is a satellite tv for pc half, for alleged and undefined misbehaviour. He denies the accusations made by a feminine worker.

Horner has typically smiled when he remembers he was as soon as the brand new boy, the youngest member of the Piranha Club of Formula One’s crew bosses. Men who would run over their grandmothers in the event that they a lot as delayed a pit cease.

His entrance into motor racing’s prime flight got here with Red Bull’s debut season in 2005 they usually have been forged because the occasion crew, not taking themselves too severely. I bear in mind a photographer at one perform in Bahrain falling like a felled tree right into a bush.

That was again then and Red Bull have recast themselves into the remarkably profitable machine that has taken Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen to seven world drivers’ and 6 constructors’ titles. And now, Horner is the longest-serving of the high-rolling clan of chiefs he joined as a 31-year-old of giant expertise.

How for much longer he’ll stay in publish is all of a sudden unclear, with lower than a month to go earlier than the beginning of the season in Bahrain. The automotive is because of be launched subsequent week within the manufacturing facility at Milton Keynes and there’s a desirability to resolve his future earlier than then.

I’m instructed Geri — whom he married eight years in the past and has a six-year-old son Monty with, elevating Horner’s profile in a star world he discovered agreeable to share, however doesn’t grandstand in — is ‘devastated’ by the developments. A buddy mentioned: ‘She has told Christian to make it all go away. She will be sticking to him like glue, smiling and putting on a brave face in public.’

Horner, who lives in north London, with an property in Oxfordshire the place he and Geri have a secure of race horses, instructed me on Saturday the allegations are ‘nuts’. He has employed costly attorneys to guard him from the character of the allegations being uncovered.

In practically 20 years writing about Formula One for this newspaper, I’ve identified Horner in addition to every other journalist, and have discovered him to be a dependable character. So it was with shock that I heard the tales over the weekend. They have been denied not solely by Horner in his SMS exchanges with me however by the crew’s PR machine.

That place modified when the mother or father firm — Red Bull based mostly in Salzburg — confirmed on Monday lunchtime that an investigation was ongoing.

The claims come totally or principally from a detailed colleague of Horner. I used to be instructed she was within the manufacturing facility on Monday working via the day. Mail Sport is aware of the person’s title however is not going to reveal it for authorized causes.

An ingredient of the imbroglio, although, and fewer apparent, is a typical Formula One twist: politics is rarely removed from the floor and whatever the particulars of the case, there’s a subtext — a tug of struggle between these in Salzburg and the crew Horner runs.

The spark of this distinction of outlook might be traced again to the dying of the corporate’s founder Dietrich Mateschitz in October 2022. Mateschitz, the good Austrian entrepreneur and billionaire, was a buddy of Ecclestone, who beneficial Horner, then making a reputation for himself because the boss of Arden in Formula 3000 and on the lookout for a break into Formula One.

The Ecclestone-Mateschitz-Horner axis was tight, not least with Horner appearing as greatest man at Ecclestone’s third marriage ceremony, an obligation reciprocated when Horner moved into the next realm of fame via his marriage to Geri. (He has a daughter, Olivia, 9, with former accomplice Beverley Allen.)

‘Christian is closest to the old school of bosses I used to know,’ Ecclestone as soon as instructed me, additionally suggesting his pal as a successor as the game’s ringmaster, a notion blown out of the water when American conglomerate, Liberty Media, purchased the game in 2017.

Back to Mateschitz and his dying aged 79. Since then, the corporate is much less clearly dominated by an overarching figurehead. Key figures have jostled for place.

One of these is Oliver Mintzlaff, the managing director and former boss of RB Leipzig. As one Red Bull observer mentioned yesterday: ‘Mintzlaff wants Horner to depart, not least because he has become too senior and too expensive for their liking. But the Thais on the main board aren’t so positive.’

The Thai contingent is headed by Chalerm Yoovidhya, son of Red Bull’s co-founder Chaleo, together with Mateschitz. Chalerm, as an inheritor to the corporate fortune, is estimated to be price some £30billion. He stays a Horner loyalist, having turned as much as race weekends, together with to see Verstappen clinch the title in Qatar in October — coincidentally, when rumours of the allegations are actually mentioned to have originated.

Another determine within the combine is Dr Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s 80-year-old motorsport adviser — an Austrian believed to be extra consistent with Mintzlaff’s outlook than Horner’s.

‘Marko was given a contract renewal last year, but he saw his money halved,’ mentioned a well-placed F1 determine yesterday. ‘There is the notion that he wants his revenge on Horner, and wants him out.’

This is all a horror for Horner, who was born into motoring. His father Garry owned an automotive enterprise and Christian realized primary mechanics at a younger age. He was 11 when the bug actually bit.

‘There was an old kart in the garage of the house my parents were buying,’ Horner recalled. ‘They did not manage to get it as part of the sale. So I pestered them until they found a go-kart in the local paper. It was about sixty quid in Leamington Spa and my mother bought it for my birthday.’

Horner did properly as a younger driver, racing towards David Coulthard, however found his ceiling, admitting: ‘I was following Juan Pablo Montoya (the super Colombian talent who drove in F1) and realised he was in a different league.’

He knew his future was operating groups relatively than racing for them, simply as Ecclestone had as a child known as Stirling Moss zoomed previous him half a century earlier than.

Away from the flashbulbs, Horner is a motor racing obsessive, a ‘racer’ as they’re identified, and he’s now hoping he can proceed within the position that has for thus lengthy outlined him.