Why Red Bull may be its own worst enemy in getting F1 to move on from the Horner saga

The saga surrounding Christian Horner and his future as team principal at Red Bull has dominated the agenda and grabbed front pages around the world.

As the multiple layers of a very complicated story continue to be unwrapped, every time it appears that things are ready to calm down they erupt again.

Perhaps the biggest bombshell came after the Bahrain Grand Prix when Jos Verstappen launched a broadside against Horner in calling for him to go.

“There is tension here while he remains in position,” said the Dutchman.

“The team is in danger of being torn apart. It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode. He is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.”

Those remarks, coming on the same weekend that documents were sent around to senior F1 personnel from an anonymous email address, pointed to a conspiracy that was not out of place in a Hollywood movie.

PLUS: What’s behind efforts to bring down Red Bull F1 team boss Horner

It is hard to predict where things will go from here. But, from Red Bull’s perspective, the whole affair has been a massive distraction and one which it hopes ends soon so the focus can return to racing.

As Sergio Perez said in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday evening: “Well, I think now this is all behind us. We are, the whole team, a race team at the end of the day, and we are here to race, and to focus and to deliver on track. Our main focus, it’s on the racing side, simple as that.”

On one level, Red Bull is indeed managing to keep the focus in the right place. Within the garage, the impression is that it has successfully isolated itself away from all the paddock politics to stay concentrated on the job in hand.

In the RB20, Red Bull has produced a stunning step forward that has already left rivals reeling – and it did not skip a beat with its performance at the F1 season opener.

As Verstappen said about the frenzy surrounding the team: “I think you could see in Bahrain that it doesn’t affect the performance of the team.

“Of course, ideally, as a team, you wouldn’t like to have these kinds of moments, but it also shows that I think we are all quite focused on our job. And that is of course to perform on the track.”

But there is no getting away from the fact that the drama surrounding Red Bull – and the intrigue of the incredible plot over Horner’s…