Power
The man who gives Red Bull Racing wings
As team boss, Christian Horner (Leamington, GB, 1973) is at the heart of Red Bull Racing's successes, with the most recent highlight being the double world championship in 2022. Who is this man who gets the best out of Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez?
Just before the start of the Singapore Grand Prix, in the evening of October 2, 2022, there is the usual hustle and bustle on the track. It is dark and the circuit has been plagued by tropical showers for days. Despite this, the Marina Bay Street Circuit welcomes a record number of visitors during the race weekend: 302.000. The start of the race has been postponed due to bad weather conditions. The commentators on hand do their best to fill the airtime and aim their microphones at insiders and celebrities, including Will.i.am who performed the night before. But the big star on the track is reigning world champion Max Verstappen, who has to start from eighth position because due to a team error - he had too little fuel on board to complete Q3 - he had to abandon his last fast lap during qualifying prematurely. Had he completed the lap and then done another run-off lap, he might not have had enough fuel to hand over the mandatory fuel sample to the FIA afterwards. It is difficult to overtake on the track in Singapore, so it will be a big challenge for Max to even make it onto the podium. Theoretically he has a chance to extend his title this weekend, but everything has to go his way. And it doesn't. Christian Horner, team principal of Formula 4 team Red Bull Racing since January 2005, 1, does not look back at the debacle of the day before: “There is everything to play for.” Due to the weather situation and the number of safety cars, the race is limited in time and only 59 of the 61 laps are completed. Max's teammate Sergio Pérez crosses the line as the winner, followed by both Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Max Verstappen does not get further than P7. So the champagne will remain in the cooler for another week: in Tokyo he will once again become world champion with his thirty-second Grand Prix victory in his career. After the race, Horner told Sky Sports F1: “It's beyond all our dreams. Max has been truly, truly dominant. We came back from some difficulties in the first couple of races, but honestly, he and the team have just raised it to another level.”
Special
Since he was 31e stepped in, at the time as the youngest team boss in Formula 1, he molded his team into an almost unbeatable machine. Now, at 49e, which makes him the longest-serving team boss, he can look back on six drivers' championships (Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013, Max Verstappen in 2021 and 2022) and five constructors' titles (2010 to 2013 and 2022). We meet him for this interview in the Jackie Stewart building of Red Bull's headquarters in Milton Keynes, where 1.400 people work. His office is bright, but somewhat impersonal. Actually just like Horner himself. He is friendly, but not warm. He comes across as open, but doesn't reveal much and knows how to avoid difficult questions – and easy ones: he doesn't want to say how many cars he has. During the week he commutes daily between North London and Milton Keynes, about an hour's drive away. But he usually spends weekends at the family home in Oxfordshire with his wife, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, and their three children – both have a daughter from previous relationships and together they have a son, Monty, since January 2017. Despite his time-consuming job, Horner tries to spend as much time as possible with his family. “Formula 1 will swallow you whole if you're not careful, so it's a matter of discipline. Because you won't get this time with the kids back. I try to take my son to school or pick up my daughter at least once a week. And when we are together, we are really together and I am not constantly staring at my phone.” Formula 1 is a demanding sport with 23 races in the new season, for which Horner travels all over the world with his team: from Saudi Arabia to Australia and from Canada to Brazil. “We are a fairly young family, so it is possible that Geri and the children will attend some races during the season. I think it is important to involve them as much as possible.”
Zoo
Christian met Geri in 2010 through Bernie Ecclestone, then the boss of Formula 1 and the big man behind the commercial rise of this highest class in motorsport. She is a guest at a grand prix. Both are involved in another relationship. The singer, formerly known as Ginger Spice, has no direct ties to Formula 1, but she has always had a great interest in cars: her father was a second-hand car dealer. While her fellow Spice Girls went shopping at the major fashion brands of the world with their first earned money, Geri bought a 1964 MGB GT. She sold the car when she left the band in 1998, which is generally considered to be the best-selling girl group of all time by selling more than 45 million albums and 30 million singles. “She sold all her belongings when she moved to America to pursue her solo career and donated the proceeds to charity,” said Christian Horner. “But afterwards she terribly regretted getting rid of the MGB GT, because it had great emotional value for her. I managed to track down who had bought the car: someone in the north of Scotland, who luckily was open to selling it back to me. The car was in perfect condition, nothing had been changed - the same cassette was even still in the recorder, haha. At 44e birthday, on August 6, 2016, I surprised Geri by giving her an envelope containing the keys.” Besides cars, they have another shared passion: animals. “Gosh, we have a whole zoo: dogs, cats, goats, donkeys, chickens, rabbits… We had one dog named after Bernie Ecclestone, unfortunately 'Bernie' passed away in 2021. But Flav (named after Flavio Briatore, the former team boss of Benetton and Renault, ed.) is still going strong. Although he is a bit overweight.” Five horses are also part of the menagerie, two of which are racing horses. “Geri has always ridden horses. The horses are named after Spice Girls songs. Unfortunately it was Scream If You Want To Go Faster already occupied, so that was it lift me up.” The seven-year-old bay gelding won a Point-to-Point at Mollington Racecourse last year, with his jockey Hannah Hen. The win, the first for Halliwel, came with prize money of £175. Of course it cannot be compared to the amounts involved in Formula 1, but the Horners were no less proud.
