As team boss, Christian Horner (Leamington, GB, 1973) is at the forefront of Red Bull Racing's successes, most recently 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, on the evening of Oct. 2, 2022, there is the usual hustle and bustle on the track. It is dark and the circuit has been ravaged by tropical showers for days. Nevertheless, the Marina Bay Street Circuit greets a record number of visitors during the race weekend: 302,000. The start of the race has been postponed due to the poor weather condition. The commentators in attendance do their best to fill the airtime, pointing 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 a team error - he didn't have enough fuel on board to complete Q3 - forced him to prematurely abort his last fast lap during qualifying. Had he finished the lap anyway and then done another run-out lap, he might not have had enough fuel to hand over the mandatory fuel sample to the FIA afterwards. On the Singapore circuit, overtaking is difficult, so it will be quite a challenge for Max to make the podium at all. Theoretically, he has a chance to prolong his title this weekend, but everything has to go his way. And so it does not. Christian Horner, the team boss of Formula One team Red Bull Racing since Jan. 4, 2005, is not looking at the debacle of a day earlier: "There is everything to play for." Due to the weather situation and the amount of safety cars, the race is limited in time, with only 59 of the 61 laps completed. Max's teammate Sergio Pérez crosses the line as the winner, followed by both Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Max Verstappen comes no further than P7. So the champagne stays in the cooler for another week: in Tokyo, his thirty-second career Grand Prix victory makes him world champion once again. 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."
Since stepping in at 31, then the youngest team boss in Formula One, he has molded his squad into a seemingly unbeatable machine. Now, at 49, making 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, which employs 1,400 people. His office is bright but somewhat impersonal. Basically like Horner himself. He is friendly, but not warm. He comes across as open, but gives little away and knows how to dodge tough questions - AND easy ones: he won't say how many cars he has. During the week he commutes daily between North London and Milton Keynes, say an hour's drive. But weekends he usually spends 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 had 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 completely swallows you up if you're not careful, so it's a matter of discipline. Because you can'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 looking at my phone." Formula One 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, which makes it possible for Geri and the kids to attend some races during the season. I think it's important to involve them as much as possible."
Christian meets Geri in 2010 through Bernie Ecclestone, then the boss of Formula One and the big man behind the commercial rise of this highest class of motorsports. She is a guest at a grand prix. Both are still involved in another relationship. The singer, formerly known by the stage name Ginger Spice, has no direct ties to Formula 1, though she has always had a keen interest in cars: her father was a used-car dealer. Where her fellow Spice Girls went shopping with their first earned money, probably at the big fashion brands of this world, Geri buys a 1964 MGB GT. She sold the car when she left the band in 1998, widely considered the best-selling girl group of all time by selling more than 45 million albums and 30 million singles. "She sold all her possessions when she moved to America for her solo career and donated the proceeds to charity," said Christian Horner. "But she regretted terribly afterwards that she got rid of the MGB GT, because it had great emotional value for her. I managed to find out who had bought the car: someone in the north of Scotland, who fortunately was open to selling it back to me. The car was in perfect condition, nothing had been changed about it either - the same cassette was even still in the recorder, haha. On her 44th birthday, on August 6, 2016, I surprised Geri by giving her an envelope containing the keys." Besides cars, they have another shared passion: animals. "Geez, 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." Also part of the menagerie are five horses, two of which are racehorses. "Geri has always ridden horses. The horses are named after Spice Girls songs. Unfortunately, Scream If You Want To Go Faster was already taken, so that became 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 victory, the first for Halliwel, netted prize money of £175. Not comparable, of course, to the sums involved in Formula 1, but the Horners were no less proud.
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