After weeks of turmoil at Red Bull Racing, the team’s embattled director Christian Horner had argued at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, more in hope than realism, that it was time to draw a line under the controversy who surrounded him and his team.
What followed in Formula 1’s first free week since the start of the new season dashed any vague hopes he may have harbored and control will be renewed this weekend at the Australian Grand Prix, where the temporary moratorium on the mutual struggle at Red Bull will one day be lifted. more are coming under great pressure.
Related: Atomization: The Horner saga raises questions about what’s really happening in F1
Horner has endured the most turbulent and difficult two months of his career since it was announced in early February that he was under investigation for alleged inappropriate behavior following a complaint from a female member of the team. The complaint was rejected on February 28, just before the season opening of the Bahrain GP.
Horner has always denied any wrongdoing, but there was no delay. A day later, an email was leaked to the FIA, F1, the teams and the media allegedly containing messages between Horner and the complainant and the storm has only grown since.
During the race weekend in Saudi Arabia, what was seen as part of a power struggle at Red Bull got into full swing. World champion Max Verstappen’s father, Jos, openly called for Horner’s resignation, the team’s motorsport director Helmut Marko was in danger of being suspended, prompting Verstappen to threaten to leave. To which Horner responded by bluffing by stating that no single person is bigger than the team.
This was an unprecedented level of distortion and infighting for an F1 team, much of it taking place in public, anathema to organizations so committed to exercising iron control over information and image.
When the spotlight went out in Jeddah, Red Bull’s official line was one of team unity and that ruffled feathers had been smoothed and every tool that could make a mark was deployed to emphatically draw as many lines as possible.
It was a futile exercise. Shortly afterwards it was announced that the complainant had been suspended from her position, probably based on questions about the evidence she provided for the investigation. The employee then decided to appeal Horner’s decision.
Formula 1’s governing body, the FIA, has cleared its president, Mohammed ben Sulayem, of two charges of interference in the Grand Prix in the 2023 season, following an investigation by the FIA’s compliance officer and its six-member ethics body. However, they have not released any details or evidence from the investigation.
The allegations had been made to the FIA by a whistleblower that Ben Sulayem had interfered in two sporting decisions in 2023. The first was that he had intervened in the stewards’ decision at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to give Fernando Alonso a impose punishment and have it reversed. it, after which Alonso claimed a podium place.
The second was that before the first Las Vegas Grand Prix last year he had requested that the new track not be homologated for racing. It was claimed that officials had ignored the request and approved the homologation.
The claims were made public in leaked documents, but the FIA statement said no evidence of presidential interference was found.
“After reviewing the results of the investigation, the ethics committee was unanimous in their decision that there was no evidence to substantiate allegations of interference of any kind involving FIA President Mohammed ben Sulayem.”
Their conclusions stated that the investigation was conducted by the FIA compliance officer and reviewed by the ethics committee, over a period of 30 days, and that there were 11 witness interviews that reached a decisive decision.
“Allegations against the FIA President were unsubstantiated and strong evidence beyond all reasonable doubt was presented to support the determination of the FIA Ethics Committee,” the statement said.
However, no details have been released about the allegations, nor the evidence presented to refute the claims. With the sport under immense pressure to show transparency given the circumstances surrounding the recent allegations against Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, there may be some unrest within F1 that the FIA itself has conducted an internal investigation, but has not provided any detail on how and why it reached its conclusions.
Last week it was reported that she had filed a complaint about Horner’s conduct with the ethics committee of the sport’s governing body, the FIA. The complaint is said to follow two previous reports to the FIA in recent weeks by a whistleblower, both involving Horner and Red Bull. The FIA will not comment on complaints received and Red Bull has declined to make a statement on these reports.
None of this will have gone unnoticed by the various factions who will surely have spent the weeks leading to Melbourne catching its breath and formulating new tactics. From the battle for control between Red Bull’s Thai majority owners, who back Horner, and the Austrian wing of the parent company, to the internal battle between Horner and the Verstappens and Horner and Marko – all of which seems inextricably linked to one bigger struggle – there is no sense that simply claiming harmony has been achieved will actually translate into a ceasefire in Melbourne.
The wider implications for the sport remain of great importance and will be raised again in Australia. The lack of transparency has only fueled speculation, and these latest events will have fueled further unrest over the handling of this episode and the potential damage it is doing to the sport’s reputation. Several team leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the way this has been handled and have called on the FIA to intervene.
It is believed that F1 and the FIA want to be privy to the details of the investigation, which they cannot obtain due to confidentiality agreements with the parties involved, but the FIA now appears to have at least been tempted to to take active action if it wants to investigate complaints with its own ethics committee. The matter is not deteriorating, but escalating.
This weekend on track, Red Bull has the chance to strengthen the evidence that they are once again in full control of the season. Yet racing, the sport itself, remains almost an afterthought to the turbulent politics that dominate Red Bull and F1 to a greater extent than the extraordinarily formidable car the team brings to the grid.