At McLaren, the left-field meteorite of a rival team’s disaffected chief mechanic conspiring with McLaren’s designer almost brought the team to an end. At Red Bull, it’s difficult to pinpoint whether it was the controversy surrounding Horner’s infamous sex-texting conversations with his PA or the death of the team’s founder Dietrich Mateschitz at the end of 2022. Adrian Newey might conceivably still be there without one or both of those situations. But it’s as if once one domino was pulled, the stack began to fall.
We don’t yet know the definitive trigger for Horner’s dismissal – why it was today rather than last year or some time in the future – but there are political factions in this, both within the Austrian senior management team put in place in the wake of Mateschitz’s death and between that team and the 51% shareholder Charlerm Yoovidhya. How those factions aligned or didn’t align with Horner will have played their part in this outcome.
Mekies gets a promotion from team principal of the junior Racing Bulls team to overall charge of racing. He’s a capable guy, but this is now a complex operation, employing around 1,000 people and incorporating also Red Bull Powertrains as well as Red Bull Technologies.
With the death of Mateschitz and now the dismissal of the person who ran his racing show, Red Bull is in an extremely challenging position. The simplicity of the previous arrangement, whereby Mateschitz provided the money and answered to no-one and Horner ran the show is now well and truly gone. That simplicity was a big part of the reason for the success. Whether it’s the beginning of the end or the dawn of a new era only time will tell.