Christian Horner gets eye-watering £80m Red Bull pay off after brutal F1 axe
Red Bull axed Christian Horner as the chief executive and team principal of their main Formula 1 team in July after 20 years at the helm and must pay him an eye-watering sum as a result
Christian Horner will receive more than £80million as a pay off from Red Bull after he was axed by the Formula 1 team, it has been revealed. The 51-year-old spent 20 years in charge of the outfit but was ousted without warning in July.
He was replaced as team principal and chief executive by Laurent Mekies after the British Grand Prix but remained an employee until a settlement could be reached between himself and Austria-based energy drinks firm Red Bull GmbH regarding his departure, given he had a long-term contract.
Mirror Sport reported last month how the final ties had been cut, with filings to Companies House on Thursday, August 14, showing Horner had been officially terminated as a director of all three UK-registered companies related to the racing team.
And he will be well-compensated for having his contract, which was to run until 2030, ripped up. The Times reports Horner will receive more than £80m as part of the settlement deal that has been struck between the two parties behind closed doors.
As is customary in the F1 world, Horner will also have to serve a period of gardening leave before he would be allowed to begin work with another team. It is believed he would be allowed to do so in the middle of next season, should he desire to step back into the paddock.
In any case, it is understood that there would be few, if any, options for him right now. Flavio Briatore has publicly ruled out the chances of him joining Alpine in any capacity in the near future, while there is also zero current interest from new outfit Cadillac.
Horner was just 31 when he was hired by Red Bull in 2005 to lead the struggling F1 team they had just bought. But despite being by far the youngest team boss in history, he oversaw a remarkable rise to prominence which yielded eight drivers' titles – four each for first Sebastian Vettel and then Max Verstappen – and six constructors' championship successes.
But in recent years, since Red Bull founder and co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz died, his relationship with bosses in Austria had become more strained. Horner was safe while he retained the backing of Thai majority owner Chalerm Yoovidhya, but it seems even he was persuaded earlier this year that a chance was for the best.
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Mekies was promoted from sister team Racing Bulls and seems to have made a swift impact. Over the last two rounds he has overseen back-to-back victories for Verstappen in Monza and Baku, the latter race yielding 33 points in total – Red Bull's best haul of the season so far – as team-mate Yuki Tsunoda finished sixth.
The team will next year become a works outfit for the first time, building their own engines in partnership with Ford – a project birthed and overseen by Horner until he was relieved of his duties. And Mekies is likely to lose his star driver if they do not hit the ground running, with Verstappen's manager Raymond Vermeulen warning at the weekend that they will consider other options in 2026 if the Dutchman does not have a race-winning car.