Jean Todt said he met with Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz twice, but ultimately decided against joining the Bulls
If you believe Jean Todt, the story of Red Bull in Formula 1 could have been a little different. According to his own statement, the long-standing Ferrari team boss had an offer to coordinate the Bulls’ motorsport activities around 2008.
“When I left Ferrari, [Red Bull founder] Dietrich Mateschitz wanted me to join him, so he came to my home in Paris twice for lunch,” the now 80-year-old Frenchman revealed on the High Performance podcast.
Todt was team principal at Ferrari from 1993 to 2007. During this period, Michael Schumacher became world champion five times in a row with the Scuderia, among others, and the last Ferrari drivers’ title to date, won by Kimi Räikkönen in 2007, also dates back to the Todt era.
In 2008, he handed over the position of team principal to Stefano Domenicali, and during this period he received an offer from Mateschitz “to manage the team and coordinate Red Bull’s motorsport activities”, reports Todt.
However, he turned down the offer “because that chapter was closed for me”, he explains, adding: “I successfully managed a cult brand [at Ferrari]. So in a way, it couldn’t have gone any better and I wanted to move on to new challenges.“
”It was also time to give something back,“ said Todt, who instead switched to ”the other side” of the sport and was elected FIA President in 2009. He held this position until the end of 2021.
It is unclear what the structure at Red Bull would have looked like if Todt had actually accepted the offer. After all, there would hardly have been room for another “strong man” alongside the then team principal Christian Horner and the powerful advisor Helmut Marko.
What is certain, however, is that Red Bull was successful in the following years even without Todt. From 2010 to 2013, the Bulls won the drivers’ and constructors’ world championships four times in a row with Sebastian Vettel at the wheel.
