MPH: Horner GP — Will ex-Red Bull boss return as F1 team owner?

In the wake of Christian Horner‘s settlement terms with Red Bull being finalised, informed speculation suggests that he will be returning to F1 at some point next year. Maybe not at the beginning of the season, but before it is very old. At which team might that be?

Horner would not be interested in being involved just for the sake of being back in F1. Such is his ambition, he will need a stake in the team, probably a controlling one. For that reason alone, we can probably discount the Aston Martin rumours. That is Lawrence Stroll‘s team and the situation would be further complicated by the commitment made by Stroll to Adrian Newey that the technical boss will be taking a significant shareholding. That’s before even discussing the awkward situation of the circumstances under which Newey chose to leave Red Bull as Horner fought to retain control there.

The very fact that Horner was in such a situation despite having operated as the CEO and brought the team from nowhere to one of the most successful in F1 history, bringing in billions of sponsorship from commercial partners along the way, makes it obvious why control and autonomy would be so essential to him now. That means a very significant shareholding.

Toto Wolff knew that he was hitting Horner where it hurts when asked to respond to Horner’s mischievous observation that Toto had done very well at Mercedes, a team he had inherited, where all the major work had been done by Ross Brawn before him. “Not inherited,” observed Wolff. “Bought.” The very thing that Horner could not do at Red Bull, in other words.

So unless Lawrence Stroll plans on selling up before seeing the fruits of the huge investment he’s made, with the team potentially just on the verge of fantastic success, then we can probably discount Aston Martin being Horner’s destination.

Besides, for someone with the ambition of Horner – an ambition probably only intensified by the desire to prove himself all over again and show Red Bull the folly of their decision to drop him – Aston Martin is probably too high profile already. Any success he achieved there could be laid at the door of the investments previously made by Stroll (something Toto would probably be quick to point out…).

Alpine and Haas, however… Both have plenty of headroom for improvement and, under the right circumstances, could be suitable matches for Horner’s ambitions. Renault, as the owner of the Alpine team, could absolve itself from the headache of trying to turn the team around (something it has failed to do since re-purchasing the Enstone operation a decade ago) but still retain the marketing naming benefits.

Imagine Horner doing at Enstone what he did in turning the underachieving Jaguar team into the Red Bull colossus, but with Renault or Alpine’s name still attached. It’s all there at the team’s core; a great facility, with a lot of great people, a sleeping giant just waiting to be energised by someone who knows how to work the controls.

The problem might be the valuation, which even for a team such as this is around £2 billion in this Netflix era. If he wanted a controlling stake, that’s a lot of money even for a wealthy individual such as Horner. But maybe he has a commercial partner already behind him… Don’t forget, he is a very wily operator.