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The 2023 F1 season saw Max Verstappen and Red Bull achieve something that is very rare in the sport. It was what many would call a perfect driver-team combination.
Red Bull's dominant performance in the longest season in F1 history, winning 21 out of 22 races, marked a complete shutout of their competition. In terms of the criteria for what defines an elite F1 team, it Bull appeared to have checked all the necessary boxes.
Red Bull boasted an elite driver in Max Verstappen, a master of aerodynamics in Adrian Newey, and possibly one of the best power units in Honda. Their operational team conducted the most efficient pit stops, while their strategic unit, led by Hannah Schmitz, excelled in in-race strategies. Adding to their strengths was Christian Horner, the architect behind Red Bull's success, who maintained order and coherence even in challenging times.
At the start of the 2024 F1 season, the most daunting notion that everybody had was the fact that Red Bull and Max Verstappen would be the outright favorites to win the title, even if RB20 is not a dominantly fast car. Despite the performance of the car being relative to the next best challenger, the team emerged victorious.
At the end of the 2023 F1 season, many questioned who could be the catalyst to end the Red Bull-Max Verstappen dominance. As of March 2024, it seems that the self-cannibalizing dynamic within the team has initiated a gradual process that could potentially lead to the decline of the dominant empire they had built.
Red Bull-Max Verstappen: A perfect partnership
When you look at the Red Bull-Max Verstappen partnership, this is a match made in heaven. In Max, we had a driver with unmatched capabilities, being able to extract the best possible result in any car given to him. He demonstrates a robotic relentlessness rarely seen in Formula 1, surpassing even his peers in this aspect.
On the other side, you had Red Bull. Led by Christian Horner, this is a team that has been an outlaw in the way it functions and in the way it has gone about achieving success in F1. Horner made sure that Red Bull did not disintegrate when Mercedes took over at the front in 2014.
It took six years of work for the team to get back to the front and during all of this, Horner played a massive role. If not for some very harsh luck where Max Verstappen lost a ton of points in Baku and in Hungary in 2021, one could claim that Red Bull would have won the title much earlier than it going down to the wire and having the unfortunate ending involving Michael Masi.
While in Verstappen, the team had a driver who maximized everything on his side, the squad itself was performing at a ruthlessly high level. In the past couple of years, there have been several races where the outcome could have been different if it were any other team.
Examples include the 2022 F1 Mexican GP, the 2022 F1 Dutch GP, and the 2023 F1 US GP, where the car's dominance wasn't necessarily the deciding factor in securing the win.
This is a partnership that is firing at its highest RPM right now, and it's hard for anyone to keep up.
What to make of the Civil War?
Now, let's address the elephant in the room, which is the scandal that broke out at the start of the year and has taken a completely different shape. We have to specify this first to truly understand the magnitude of shift there has been in what the whole thing was supposed to be.
There's no point in going into too much detail at the moment, but to keep it short, here is a small highlight of the Christian Horner saga.
- Red Bull admits an internal investigation was started
- Multiple reports are issued by German and Dutch publications about conflict within the team and the nature of the complaint
- Red Bull issues a statement that Horner has been exonerated after the investigation
- The very next day, alleged evidence is leaked to all paddock media, the FIA president, and the FOM
- Christian Horner's wife makes an appearance at the paddock and the Thai majority shareholder is seen next to him during the podium ceremony
- To cap off the F1 Bahrain GP weekend, Max Verstappen's father, Jos Verstappen, calls for Horner's resignation from the team
While the entire saga can be very complex and hard to understand, there are a few things that stand out. This does appear to be a concerted effort to get Christian Horner out of the team. The timing of the leaks and the fact that most of it has been done whenever it has appeared that Horner has found some footing is uncanny.
With Jos Verstappen coming out in the open against Horner, it just shows that there are cracks within the team. According to Joe Saward, who extensively wrote about this in his latest notebook, there is a scenario in which Red Bull could be divided into two factions, with Christian Horner and the Thai ownership on one side and the Austrian side of the brand on the other.
The unfortunate reality of the entire situation is that all we have in front of us is speculation. There are even reports of apparently Jos Verstappen being involved with the person who complained against Christian Horner. Until all of this is official, there's no point in discussing it.
There is, however, one thing that seems quite clear at the moment. Christian Horner appears to be fighting a battle with Thai ownership on his side, while the opposition to it is still not entirely clear. Jos Verstappen has, however, reportedly said that if Horner stays at Red Bull, Max Verstappen will move to Mercedes.
What will be the fallout?
The unfortunate reality in all of this is that unless all parties reach a compromise (which seems highly unlikely at this stage), we're looking at one of the following outcomes:
- Christian Horner leaves, and Max Verstappen stays
- Christian Horner stays, Max Verstappen joins Mercedes
- Both Christian and Max stay (Jos Verstappen takes a back seat).
Let's take a look at what the possible impact could be in each of these cases.
Christian Horner leaves and Max Verstappen stays
In the short term, Red Bull will continue to win. There's no impact on this year's championship, and in all likelihood, there's no impact on what happens next season because the car is just too good.
In the long term, however, cracks will appear. The first question is who replaces Horner? The second question is what happens to the sentiment of Milton Keynes if the man who had built everything in the last 20 years is pushed out? Will Adrian Newey stay if Horner leaves? What about the rest of the group, who is far more closely aligned with Horner than anybody else?
What happens to the Red Bull powertrain program? What happens to the relationship with Ford when the man that they did the deal with has been pushed out in a power struggle? At this moment, it is clear to everyone that there has been an effort to malign Christian Horner's name. And if he is forced to leave then that is a decision being made by political duress, not because of anything else.
While Max Verstappen wins the title in 2024 and most likely in 2025, Red Bull will not be the same team in 2026, and the loss of Christian Horner will hurt the long-term prospects of a giant that could have ruled the sport for a long time.
Christian Horner stays, Max Verstappen joins Mercedes
For Red Bull's interests, both short-term and long-term, losing Max Verstappen might actually not be as massive a loss as losing Horner would. Having said that, losing a generational talent that was one of the key catalysts in winning the title in 2021 is just dumb.
This would affect the morale of the team, and it's safe to say no driver in F1 could be considered an upgrade on Max Verstappen. Unless Christian Horner plans to poach Kimi Antonelli and he proves to be the next breed of elites, it's hard to see anyone matching what the Dutch driver has done.
Overall, it would be a massive loss for Red Bull (and a massive gain for Mercedes) if Verstappen does leave the team.
Both Christian and Max stay (Jos Verstappen takes a back seat)
At this moment, whatever I've seen, I highly doubt that this would happen, but for both Red Bull and Max Verstappen, this is the best-case scenario. At this point, calmer heads must prevail, and Max might need to take a stand. For his short and long-term future, a Christian Horner-led team is the best scenario.
If for that to happen, Jos Verstappen has to take a back seat, then so be it. Believe it or not, Max Verstappen putting his foot down might just be what prevents what would most probably be a collapse of the Red Bull empire.
A parting note
More often than not, some of the greatest dominance in the sport has ended because the teams became complacent. Mercedes was complacent about its car in 2022, and hence it persevered with an already failed zero pod concept. Red Bull on its part, was complacent in 2014 when it thought the impact of a power unit regulation change wouldn't be this drastic.
Ferrari was arguably complacent when Michael Schumacher was seemingly pushed out when Luca di Montezemelo went ahead and signed Kimi Raikkonen in 2007. We can go on and on about this but there is a lesson to this story, dominance is hard to achieve in F1, and no team should take it for granted.
Red Bull is making the cardinal mistake here, let's see where the chips fall at the end of it.
