De Telegraaf
Retired Red Bull Top Advisor Helmut Marko Merciless: 'If We Had Fired Christian Horner Earlier, Max Verstappen Would Have Become Champion This Year Too'
Q: Quite a lot has happened at Red Bull Racing this season. Along with Oliver Mintzlaff, the Red Bull CEO who is responsible for the company's sports division, among other things, you dismissed Team Principal Christian Horner after more than twenty years this July. That brought an end to the power struggle between you and Horner.
Marko:"That's how it was always described in the media, but it wasn't personal. Didi (Dietrich Mateschitz, the late Red Bull founder) and I founded Red Bull Racing in 2005. We appointed Horner as Team Principal; I was there as a supervisor. Power was basically always in Austria; we made the decisions. I remember a party in 2022 before the Austrian Grand Prix. Didi was there, but not in good health. Christian came up to me and said, 'He won't make it to the end of the year.' From that moment on, he started cozying up to Chalerm Yoovidhya. When Didi died later that year, he did everything he could to take over with Yoovidhya's support. On behalf of 'Austria,' I did everything I could to prevent that."
Q:Things often got tough between, as you describe it, Austria on one side and Horner on the other. You ultimately came out on top by firing Horner this summer. Did that feel like a victory?**
Marko:"No. We had to do something because the performance on the track was lagging. If we had done it earlier, by the way, we would have gotten things on track faster this year, and Max *would* have become world champion. I am absolutely convinced of that. But those last years with Horner were unpleasant. Dirty games were played. Can you remember that I was supposedly said to have stated during Sergio Pérez's time that Mexicans are less focused than Dutch or Germans? That was fabricated, maybe by them. Just like the rumor spread in 2024 that the development of our engine was behind schedule and that we would therefore lose Ford as our sponsor. Never said, but Horner wanted to use that to suspend me. Because Max stepped in to defend me in Jeddah, it didn't happen."
Q:Horner certainly had the full support of major shareholder Yoovidhya in recent years. That changed during this season. Why was that?**
Marko: "More and more often, we could prove that Horner was lying about all sorts of things. Once Chalerm realized that too, he came to his senses.
