Former team boss Christian Horner looks back on his dismissal from Red Bull: how he was fired “quite suddenly” and who he thinks is responsible.
On July 9, 2025, it was all over: Christian Horner was relieved of his role as Red Bull team boss with immediate effect. In the eighth season of Drive to Survive on Netflix, the Briton talks about his dismissal and reveals who he thinks was responsible.
“I have a real sense of loss and hurt. It all happened pretty suddenly. I didn’t really have a chance to say goodbye properly,“ Horner recalls the hours before his dismissal last year. ”I never thought I’d ever be in this situation.“
”Of course, when you’re presented with crap like this, your first reaction is something like, ‘Fuck them! I was taken something I didn’t choose, something that was very important to me,“ adds the former team boss. ”I always did my best.“
”I did everything for my team, for the people I represented. But my performance this year wasn’t as good as usual.” Red Bull was in a sporting slump at the time of Horner’s dismissal; Verstappen’s last victory in Imola was already several weeks ago.
In addition, there was turmoil behind the scenes: as a result of the Horner affair in the spring of 2024, the 52-year-old’s reputation had suffered, and there was internal strife – both with Jos Verstappen and Helmut Marko. The mood in the team was fractured.
Horner’s dismissal: Verstappen family not responsible
However, Horner does not believe that the initiative to dismiss him came from the Verstappen family. “[Max Verstappen’s] father was never my biggest fan. He was very vocal about me,” Horner recalls. ” But I don’t think the Verstappens were responsible in any way.“
”I think this was a decision made by Oliver Mintzlaff, with Helmut [Marko] acting in an advisory capacity,“ says the former team boss, instead passing the buck to the 82-year-old Austrian. ”Ultimately, things have changed within the company, within the group.”
It all started with the death of company founder Dietrich Mateschitz, which led to power games—and apparently heralded the end of Horner: “After Dietrich’s death, I was probably seen as someone who perhaps had too much control.”
