Could Red Bull civil war really trigger shock Verstappen F1 switch to Mercedes?

One thing is sure though: this saga is far from over, and the ultimate end game may not become clear for quite some time yet.

Ever since the controversy first blew up last month, there had been speculation that this stretched far beyond being an internal matter involving Horner and a female employee.

From the off, there was talk of this being a wider power play that involved some of the key management pillars within the Red Bull organisation.

After all, the entire thing had gone public only after the Austrian Red Bull energy drinks company had uncharacteristically put an official statement out.

For a brand widely known to have a policy of saying not one word more than it needs to when it comes to press statements, blowing the thing out into the open offered food for thought about there being more to this than meets the eye.

As the saga developed, word spread that this had morphed into something far wider and was now a battle for control and influence between the Austrian side of the Red Bull company and its Thai majority owner Chalerm Yoovidhya.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this was Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko and the Verstappen camp of Max and Jos, who each had their own opinions about what they felt should happen.

Plus, we had to throw into the mix the influence of Red Bull’s major corporate partners like Ford and Oracle, although it is hard to work out which side of the fence they were sitting on.

On one hand, some have claimed there was boardroom angst over the companies potentially getting tarnished by the ties to the mess at Red Bull. However, others have suggested that their biggest concern was actually potentially losing Horner, whose influence and appeal to the wider world were key factors in driving them to get involved in the first place.

A takedown campaign

For a few short hours after Wednesday’s announcement by Red Bull that Horner had been cleared by an independent investigation, it seemed that things would settle down as attention would quickly shift back to the fortunes of the team’s RB20 on track.

But this idea was blown out of the water halfway through second practice on Thursday evening when two anonymous emails were sent to senior F1 personnel – including FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali,…