This weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring was supposed to be a celebration of the Red Bull team’s 20th year in Formula 1.
Billed as a pageantry of the energy drink’s success, involving plenty of PR – including the use of a 180mph super-drone developed by Red Bull Advanced Technologies – to capture the moment, it is also an opportunity to toast the team’s late founder and Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz following his death in October 2022. And perhaps, it posed a chance to cast all its recent strife and stories of boardroom battles into the past.
Things had started well enough on Thursday. Somewhat begrudgingly, world champion Max Verstappen did indeed commit his immediate future to the team, cooling talk of him signing for Mercedes.
In doing so, it had appeared to bring an end to the turbulence which had been started by Jos Verstappen at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Sparked by a complaint made against Horner by a female colleague, Verstappen Sr was not happy about the outcome of the internal investigation that resulted in Horner maintaining power.
Verstappen Sr made bombastic comments, warning that the team was “in danger of being torn apart”, while Red Bull was plunged into its biggest crisis during its F1 tenure. The blowback that followed threatened to destabilise the team considerably, or even see the whole operation come crashing down.
Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing with Jos Verstappen
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Over the past three months, two things had become evident. Firstly, Horner had patched up his relationship with his driver. Secondly, he had done so at a time when Verstappen had been mainly absent from his son’s side.
He was also missing when Verstappen Jr spoke in the press conference at the Red Bull Ring where he confirmed his intention to remain with the team.
It is likely he was quickly brought up to speed when he arrived in the paddock and into the Red Bull hospitality at 3pm on Thursday, some 90 minutes after his son had pledged his allegiance to Horner’s team.
The following day, in an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, Verstappen Sr claimed Horner had tried to stop him from taking part in a Legends Parade at the Red Bull Ring where he was due to drive the 2012 RB8 car.
“Over the past few days, I have heard from several people that Christian Horner did everything he could to make sure I didn’t drive,”…
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