Star Metro - Christian Horner - a brutal end to a spicy reign at Red Bull

A Red Bull team whose time at the top was clearly ending -- Max Verstappen had won just two of the last 14 races -- and a draining spell ahead of the 2024 season when he was cleared of inappropriate behaviour towards a female team member should have rung alarm bells for the 51-year-old Englishman.

Instead, just as he did when those allegations emerged in February 2024, Horner carried on working in the hope he could reignite another period of dominance.

Sebastian Vettel won four consecutive titles under Horner from 2010 to 2013, with Verstappen winning the past four. Red Bull also won six constructors' crowns in that time.

However on Wednesday, with this season's car not competitive with rivals McLaren, a discontented Verstappen and the constant hemorrhaging of pivotal backroom talent, his 20 years as CEO was ended brutally.

A characteristic of Horner's which his close friend and ex-F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone highlighted to AFP, after he was cleared of improper conduct last year, may have been his ultimate downfall.

"I said to Christian at the beginning 'Come out and say you're sorry' but he told me: 'No way, I don't want to compromise, I have done nothing that I need to say sorry for'."

His wife, former Spice Girls pop star Geri Halliwell, simply told him: "Make it all go away."

Horner has never been one to compromise since turning his back on trying to make it as a racing driver and going into management.

Appointed as the youngest team principal in the Formula One paddock aged 31 in 2005 he oversaw eight drivers' titles -- a remarkable achievement by any yardstick.

He has since become a fixture on the grid wall over the last two decades, the tactical mastermind of Verstappen's four straight titles.

- Power and sway -

Eloquent, bright and combative, his spats with his opposite number at Mercedes Toto Wolff have made for compelling viewing, not least when Verstappen controversially deprived Lewis Hamilton of an unprecedented eighth world crown on the last lap of the last race of the 2021 season in Abu Dhabi.

As team principal and chief executive of Red Bull Racing, Horner had an enormous amount of power and sway over a vast empire based at the team's Milton Keynes headquarters in England.

During his time at the tiller the company's workforce ballooned from 450 to 1,500, with one of that number's allegations shocking the F1 community.

Wolff described the investigation as "an issue for all of Formula One" while Williams chief James Vowles said "we all have to look each other in the mirror and make sure that we are... acting in a way that we can only be proud of, not today but in the next 10 years."

The turning point in Horner's career was when he first came into contact with the ambitious Austrian company Red Bull and its 'father' Dietrich Mateschitz when he was in F3000.

Mateschitz, who died in 2022, had purchased the Jaguar F1 outfit in 2004 -- and saw enough in the young Horner to appoint him as team boss for Red Bull's top-level debut in 2005.

Among the many inspired moves Horner made was to bring on board Adrian Newey, ranked as one of the most talented engineers and designers of his or any other generation.

Newey, who climbed aboard the Red Bull wagon in 2006, produced the cars that won the drivers' and constructors titles every year from 2010 to 2013, the drivers' championship in 2021 and 2024, and both championships in 2022 and 2023.

Newey's departure for Aston Martin this season signalled the foundations on which success had been built at Red Bull by Horner were foundering.

Despite all the attendant stress of being at the helm of steering such a colossal enterprise through the choppy waters of a multi-billion pound industry -- Horner retained an air of boyish enthusiasm.

He married Halliwell, best known as Ginger Spice, in 2015, and the couple have one son, Montague. Horner also has a daughter from a previous relationship.

He will now have plenty of free time to devote to his family and the football club he supports, second-tier Coventry City, and also ponder where it all went wrong, that perhaps compromise is worth it, and what his next step will be.

T. MacDonald--SMC