Why has Red Bull's Christian Horner replaced Sebastian Vettel at the Goodwood Festival of Speed?

This year's Goodwood Festival of Speed is currently underway at Goodwood House, Sussex, United Kingdom. It is the festival where motorsport enthusiasts meet with top-of-the-line automobiles and renowned motorsport figures. However, there was an exception at Red Bull this time around.

The festival takes place annually, ahead of F1's summer break, and is usually scheduled to avoid clashing with the F1 calendar. As the festival often brings in world champions, who take on vintage and advanced cars, they attract hundreds of thousands of fans from all over the world. With that said, Sebastian Vettel, one of the festival's prominent crowd-pullers is absent in 2024.

According to reports from Planet F1, the four-time F1 world champion is on a family holiday, and due to this, he failed to make it to Goodwood. The German former driver retired from the sport at the end of 2022 but did not miss out on his Goodwood duty in 2023.

Vettel was due to drive one of Red Bull's cars at the festival, something he has been diligently doing for the past few years. However, his absence meant someone had to take up the role, and Red Bull instantly found a replacement in their team principal, Christian Horner.

Horner, the Milton-Keynes-based team's boss used this opportunity to take on Red Bull's 2012 Championship-winning car RB8 (belonged to Vettel) at Silverstone.

This was a monumental move for the British boss who drove a single-seater car for the first time in 26 years. That too on the occasion of Red Bull's 20-year celebration at the Goodwood Festival of Speed at Silverstone.

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Red Bull boss on his Goodwood opportunity: "It was fun"

Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner poses for a photo with the newly unveiled Red Bull RB17 hypercar during Day Two of the Goodwood Festival of Speed at Goodwood on July 12, 2024 in Chichester, England. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

Christian Horner comes with prior experience in single-seaters and is quite well-equipped with Formula 1 car mechanics. Even though he was out of action for nearly three decades, it did not stop him from enjoying one of F1's top cars from the last decade.

"It was fun," Horner said as per Reuters. "The first time I’ve driven a Red Bull car and certainly the first time with a hand clutch and two pedals. I haven’t driven a single-seater since 1998 and a Formula 1 car since 1993."

"So I thought there was the opportunity yesterday to drive a car with a hand clutch and a left-foot brake. It was a great honor and a great privilege to drive one of these amazing cars, a championship-winning car," he added.

Besides this, Christian Horner and Adrian Newey unveiled the much-awaited Red Bull RB17 at Goodwood Festival of Speed. The car costs a whopping $6 million, and only 50 units will be available for sale.