To the very end, the vastly self-confident Christian Horner clearly considered himself cock of the walk, a big shot and master of all he surveyed.
Just a week ago, he was walking the wide acres at Silverstone’s annual clay-pigeon shooting event, near his country pile in Oxfordshire, with an air of absolute invincibility.
You can see why the man felt so untouchable, despite the rank underperformance this season of the Red Bull Racing team he has been running.
It’s not much more than a year since hundreds of WhatsApp messages, sent by him to a female member of staff, many of a sexual nature, dropped like kryptonite on F1 and were brushed off as a mild inconvenience.
For most people in public life, a data drop creating such a grubby and deeply unattractive picture would have been terminal.
If an employer did not consider the act of sending them to have brought the business into disrepute and immediately sacked the sender, then that individual would have found the embarrassment insufferable and walked.
Christian Horner has been sacked as Red Bull team principal in a move that has shocked F1
The sacking comes a year after Horner was cleared of wrongdoing after a scandal involving alleged inappropriate messages sent to a colleague
Horner was the longest-serving team principal in F1, taking over at Red Bull 20 years ago
His wife, the Spice Girl Geri, stood by him throughout the scandal
Not Horner. Wealth, power, adoration, a country pile and celebrity wife like his clearly made him feel untouchable. You hire an expensive barrister, wait for an independent inquiry to absolve you, and the rest is history.
Well, we know quite a lot more about sport’s priorities today. No problem when there are allegations of sexual harassment and coercive, controlling behaviour.
Big problem when Max Verstappen is made to look like a very ordinary driver and Red Bull start to backfire. There you have it. The skewed moral compass of elite sport, writ large.
Horner no doubt felt that he had ironed things out with Verstappen after their hour’s chat on the bottom floor of Red Bull’s hospitality area at the Silverstone paddock entrance last week. But it turns out Red Bull were not willing to tolerate another afternoon of failure on the Silverstone track.
Verstappen’s father, Jos, made it perfectly clear last year how deeply inappropriate he considered Horner’s nocturnal messaging to have been.
He, for one, will not be mourning this departure. One suspects Verstappen won’t either. He skipped that clay shoot with a stomach bug.
To some extent, Horner’s conduct last year has come back to bite him. It left him with less credit when things began to unravel on the track and has been part of the consideration now – despite Red Bull’s insistence, last year, that there was nothing to see. Red Bull are perfectly aware that, for all the talk about the investigation’s ‘independence’, those emails were reputationally damaging.
But please, let no one labour under the illusion that they are anything but a peripheral consideration here. Had Red Bull and Verstappen been flying this season, that conduct would have been put right out of mind. Valuable material for episode one of the next season of Drive to Survive. Nothing more.
The 51-year-old was made an OBE in December, receving the honour from the King with wife Geri alongside him
Max Verstappen has won the last four world championships under Horner’s leadership, but the Dutchman now sits 69 points off standings leader Oscar Piastri, in third place
The move comes just three days after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where Geri (centre) joined her husband on the grid
Horner, pictured on the grid with Jeremy Clarkson, only survived for so long as a result of F1’s skewed moral compass
As Horner goes, the PR operation swings into action once more, with Red Bull’s Oliver Mintzlaff thanking Horner today for his ‘exceptional work’ over the last 20 years and informing us that he will be ‘forever remain an important part of our team history’.
The eight drivers’ championships and six constructors’ championships he brought, through Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, are certainly something. But the WhatsApp cache is the shadow on the wall. A very obstinate stain.
Horner, the big-timer, was extremely sure that the negative press would quickly be reduced to dust. Verstappen’s win in Bahrain last season made him feel huge personal vindication.
‘That’s the best (way) to f*** them all,’ was his charming observation. ‘Shut the f*** up.’ Well, the past has caught up with him now. A year too late, he is discovering what comeuppance looks like.
