A vision for change in Formula 1

Like him or leave him - and this writer readily admits to having done both over the years - there is absolutely no doubt that, Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing's team principal, deserves enormous respect for the eight titles (and half a century of grand prix victories) the 41-year-old has delivered on behalf of the lifestyle drinks company and its enigmatic Austrian owner, Dietrich Mateschitz.

Horner epitomises the new wave of team bosses who do not actually own a team as the likes of Colin Chapman (Lotus), Ken Tyrrell and Enzo Ferrari did, but manage Formula 1 operations on behalf of owners with bigger commercial fish to fry.

What sets him apart, though, is that he rapidly aligned himself with F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone despite being half his age - a political masterstroke which wrong-footed even Ferrari.

He was instrumental in prising Adrian Newey away from McLaren, then played a major role in grooming Sebastian Vettel. Once Red Bull's political, technical and sporting stars aligned there was no stopping the team, with four successive drivers' and constructors' title doubles between 2010 and 2013 being the result.

Success flowed during the Newey-Vettel era Horner built at Red Bull © LAT

Then disaster: Newey decided he had tired of designing (only) the planet's fastest racing cars, Vettel figured the grass down Maranello Way was redder, and engine supplier Renault found itself on the back foot after underestimating the hybrid turbo challenge.

Result: Just three 2014 victories via Daniel Ricciardo, who shaded Vettel last season - to the degree the German upped sticks for Italy.

We meet during the second Barcelona test in his office in the annex to Red Bull's "Energy Station" hospitality unit for a semi-impromptu interview, one which again proves his passion and understanding for a sport he fell in love with as young karter.

Formula Renault, F3 and F3000 followed before he switched to team management, claiming the 2002/3 F3000 titles for his Arden team - now contesting GP2/3, Formula Renault 3.5 and entry-level MSA Formula under his father Garry.

Our interview opens to a discussion about F1's falling TV and audience numbers; is the current spectacle really up to being called the "pinnacle of the sport"?

"Of course you can't ignore certain facts, but [F1 is] very good at talking the sport down," Horner says, stating the obvious. "When all you're talking about is negativity and you're a prospective sponsor and you're looking at the reports of that thing, why on earth would you want to come in?

"What we should be saying is 'Yes, we've got 10 teams this year, potentially 11 next year, yes we've got some issues and yes, we've got to tidy those issues up'. But we shouldn't do our dirty washing in public and we should address those issues, get costs down, make sure it's a sustainable business if a team is well-managed and well-run. It shouldn't be a dirty word when talking about making a profit. Ultimately teams should make a profit."

How much tidying is, though, required?

Horner sees room for improvement in the overall Formula 1 product © LAT

"I think what we have now, whilst it's attractive in many ways, can be made better," he says. "Like so many things in life, you can always improve.

"I think we've got a lot of margin in cornering speeds, we can increase cornering speeds. We can make the cars more demanding for drivers.

"What we need to try and get back to is where you've got three equal influences into a Formula 1 car's performance. One is the driver, one is the chassis, one is the engine and they should really be equal. The tyres I would say are part of the chassis. We are out of kilter with that in current Formula 1."

So where does Horner believe the weighting is wrong?

"What we have today is far, far too much of an engine formula, because the differential between best and worst is far too big. I would like to see more equilibrium across chassis and power unit."

He readily admits, though, that better drivers will also skew the equilibrium, stating "the cream will always rise to the top".

As a concept that sounds great, but does it not run counter to F1's health and safety kick? Is Horner suggesting a return to the cornering speeds achieved by Michael Schumacher's Ferrari F2004, which still holds numerous lap records 11 years on?

"There is [a safety consideration]," is his immediate response, "but I think we're so far below the threshold that the FIA are comfortable for cornering speeds to be increased reasonably significantly.

Arden still races on the F1 support bill and other major series © LAT

"At the moment we're achieving very similar speeds to GP2 cars in certain medium and high-speed corners. We're going five, six seconds slower than we were a few years ago. We can build more performance back into the cornering speeds of these cars."

Again the safety question: are circuits up to such speeds, or would they require major revamps?

"Even on today's current circuits we are below the threshold significantly. The FIA have stated during various discussions that we've had, that there is room to move the bar higher on cornering speeds."

But speed costs money, while change is the most expensive commodity suffered by F1 teams. How do such proposals fit into today's cash-strapped environment? Horner's response is intriguing given RBR's Newey advantage:

"If you limit the tools that you can develop with, then there doesn't need to be a big drive in cost. Today we can only use windtunnels for so many hours and have so much CFD. If you wanted to go really extreme and be really controversial, get rid of windtunnels. They are expensive things to run and feed.

"Get back to engineering ingenuity; give everybody the same microchip for their CFD cluster, and make it down to the brainpower within the team as opposed to computer or windtunnel power..."

Surely, though, the other teams - particularly those with state-of-art tunnels - won't buy into such proposals.

Horner suggests windtunnel use could be banned to cut costs © LAT

"We've got a great windtunnel too," he counters. "We've won four consecutive double world championships out of that tunnel and we've invested a lot of money in it.

"But we're just saying, if you take a more holistic view of what needs to be done moving forward, I think if I was Bernie [Ecclestone] and [FIA president] Jean [Todt], that's the direction I'd be looking at."

Why are they not looking in that direction in F1's Strategy Group, on which Horner, Ecclestone and Todt sit, with the brief of pushing future concepts?

"They have that info..." says Horner, adding that all it would need to enter the regulations is "enough people to agree on it to meet the voting stipulation and then it goes to the [F1] Commission [for voting into the rule books]... [then to the FIA World Motorsport Council for ratification]."

Banning wind tunnels is certainly left-field, but are engines not currently higher on F1's to-do list, particularly given the vote which went against Horner's push to see change introduced as soon as 2016?

Indeed, in November Horner argued for a return to V8s or a conversion of existing engines to twin turbos to boost output to 1000bhp. How does that square with his chassis equilibrium theory?

"If we're going to keep the concept of engine that's been invested in, fair enough, but I think we need to make it a lot more cost-effective," he says. "There's a desire to have more performance, but it needs to be not at any cost, and I think the manufacturers are all struggling with the cost of development of the current power unit.

"What we want to do is attract more engine manufacturers into the sport, not frighten them away. So I think if we came up with a set of regulations that could look at really dramatically reducing power unit costs, then that is only going to be passed on to the teams in the customer supply price, which should be 30 per cent of what they currently are."

However, having said "we're very good at talking [F1] down", was he not guilty of doing exactly that last year through his vocal criticism of the new engines?

The switch to turbo hybrids helped pave the way for Honda's Formula 1 return © LAT

"At the end of the day we can learn from that. I think the biggest mistake we made was that we allowed engineers to write regulations. I think that's innately dangerous, because in that brief there was no mention of costs.

"What we have now are engineering masterpieces. The packaging on these cars is exquisite, but the man in the grandstand or watching television, does he appreciate that, or get to appreciate that?

"The answer is: 'Not really', because he's interested in what the event is, man and machine, at the limit, racing each other. The cars need to be fast, they need to be spectacular, they need to have that 'Wow, I can't do that' effect."

A cost-saving suggestion doing the rounds is "core" engines and chassis, whereby a number of components are shared between a variety of teams, or standardised across the grid. Where does Horner stand on the "core question"?



"We've seen common ECUs work pretty well in Formula 1 when there was an outcry about them at the time. Why not look at all the ancillary components to the engine: turbo, energy recovery system and maybe we can go so far as saying 'OK, let's standardise the whole bottom end of the engine.

"The majority of the performance in a combustion engine is in the top end of the engine anyway. Leave that open to manufacturers to develop. We have limits on windtunnels; why not limit some engine components?"

Returning to Horner's earlier point about attracting engine manufacturers, would cylinder head differentiation, though, provide enough to entice more engine suppliers to join the fray?

"I think it certainly could be. You could allow it to be enough. Let's face it, these guys are also here for a marketing return. How long are these guys going to hang around if they're getting beaten up every week?"

Red Bull's engine partner Renault has found the going tough © LAT

Clearly Horner, as head of a team that procures engines from outside suppliers, would prefer the cheapest powertrains, but where does he stand on core chassis - a hotly debated topic during recent Strategy Group/F1 Commission meetings?

"You've got to look at the definition of 'constructors' championship' he says after reflection. If we're just doing a teams' championship, you've got to think big picture.

What is a Formula 1 team? Is it a team that builds its own cars, or is it a team that buys various elements and becomes a race team? What I'm saying is that as a team, do you have to construct your own car? Should you be paid the same as a constructor? That's a commercial debate."

Horner is a staunch advocate of customer cars, particularly given his outfit's easy access to a customer with solid credit ratings, namely sister outfit Toro Rosso. Surely his commercial arguments apply equally to customer cars...

"Yes, of course they do. But I would say that a customer car with stable regulations is potentially a more cost-effective way of operating pretty competitively in Formula 1..."

Fundamentally F1 is at a cross roads, having to choose from four options: status quo, customer cars, third cars, core cars. Why does Horner clearly favour customer cars?

Horner would rather see year-old cars racing than on display at events © LAT

"Because at the end of the year we have an amount of stock - a decent team will probably build five chassis a year - so those cars are going off to different airports and show events around the world.

"If that stock is sitting there, surely it would make more sense for it to go to a team that's at the other end of the field.

"It can focus on being a race team, rather than designing, manufacturing, producing, crash tests, etc, etc. All the costly elements that are involved in designing and building a car that in their case isn't going to be competitive anyway."

Where, though, does that leave the constructors' championship, and why is he against third cars?

"Well, this is the thing," he says, responding to the first question. "This is why I'm saying you've got to look at what the definition of a team is."

Then: "We have an obligation as a team if the numbers drop below a certain number [to introduce third cars]. Ultimately for the sport is it great for there to be just five or six teams, each running three cars? Probably not, which is why you don't see three cars in our garage."

Another of Horner's bugbears that the current cars look too similar: "I think probably what we should do is in many respects loosen the regulations. Put more restrictions in the tools that you can use, and carve the regulations that encourage different shapes.

Red Bull caused a stir in pre-season with its testing camouflage livery © LAT

"If you painted all the cars white, it would be quite difficult to tell them apart. I think we should have more freedom in the regulations; it's certainly something to consider."

We near the end of our allotted time, but Horner is in free flow: "If you think about it, a top team has 700 or so people, designing and manufacturing two cars - it's nuts. If you look at what the drivers of those costs are, it's the sporting and technical regulations.

"And now we're going down the route of cost caps and budget caps and whatever. If you look at the fundamental basis of those regulations, then you can depress the costs in a dramatic way, in a very dramatic way."

He concedes that research and development is arguably the biggest cost driver, but again he has a ready answer to the obvious question: "Of course it is. But then it's the tools that you're fielding. Maybe you could look at a token system on the chassis, like we have with the engine."

Which was devised by engineers...

"Yes, but I think you could look at something like that. But then you've got to limit the tools, because otherwise with every token you'll put in a huge effort.

"You could consider an element like that, but then, why not be radical? Why not get rid of windtunnels? Why not make everybody have the same processes?"

Tokens for chassis development, bans on wind tunnels, common CFD clusters, same processes - Bernie surely taught him well; any wonder Christian Edward Johnston Horner OBE is Ecclestone's anointed heir? Yet, clearly a lot of independent thought has gone into Horner's answers to some prickly questions.