How the Horner investigation eclipsed Red Bull’s 2024 F1 launch

He looked rather small.

Christian Horner, surrounded by reporters in a horseshoe of chairs and standing stragglers, a few feet from where Red Bull's RB20 car had just been revealed. The contrast stark between the pristine machine and the messy stack of dictaphones.

Horner’s stature hadn't changed, of course, but there was something missing. The bravado was punctured; the immaculate image sagged. Perhaps, irrevocably so.

To a certain extent, this picture was inevitable. It was, after all, taking place within a live launch where Red Bull wasn’t claiming an old car or an F1 show model was the real thing. Horner was exactly where he was supposed to be.

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Soon he was fielding questions on whether the RB20 and its “brave” design evolution – per Sergio Perez – were trolling Mercedes, given where such developments had first been seen, and seen so unsuccessfully. The chunky and basic floor on the launch car suggests Red Bull is to a certain extent playing with observers – and it’s not alone in doing so this pre-season.

But that topic had followed first a briefing from Red Bull’s communications chief that questions about the investigation into Horner’s behaviour towards a female employee couldn’t probe too far. That it remained a live legal situation and questions would be shut down if they delved too deeply.

But Horner was, however, free to answer questions on the mood within the Red Bull squad in light of the allegations.

Horner maintains his innocence but appeared a shadow of himself at the Red Bull launch

Photo by: Erik Junius

“Inevitably,” began the muted reply, “there has been a distraction…”

The focus had been elsewhere for days. When Red Bull emailed launch attendees on Wednesday to chiefly explain where the event would later be streamed to the public, major media outlets including the BBC and The Guardian ran stories on Horner still being set to appear. That it would be his first public appearance since the news of the investigation first broke in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, to which Horner said "I completely deny these claims". This is the stance he has maintained.

Pondering Thursday ahead of time had therefore been about how the situation would be addressed – what was Red Bull’s message going to be? It was simply too important not to come up.

"I don't know who likes to write these kinds of things. But to me and Christian, it’s [the relationship] like always" Max Verstappen

Would an announcement be made to the gathered crowd – which included fans and team guests – once they were first gathered in the team’s MK7 conference and event hall, surrounded by 14 of its previous F1 designs? Would a soft stage question be levelled at Horner once the event got going? The press questions request turned out to be the first mention.

Before this, the launch had proceeded as had been planned for weeks. As 2024 forms the 20th campaign in Red Bull’s F1 history, it’s clear the team intends to celebrate.

This initially takes the form of marketing videos where Horner was front and centre. In the first, his typical bluster was back, suggesting it had been filmed before the investigation began. The second revealed he’d attended the RB20’s Silverstone shakedown on Tuesday.

His stage appearance – where he was later joined by Red Bull’s technical team leaders over the years, Adrian Newey and Pierre Wache, plus F1 Academy drivers Emely de Heus and Hamda Al Qubaisi – split the two videos.

Read the room - Coulthard and Horner discussing this 2006 stunt caused eyebrows to be raised

Photo by: Gareth Bumstead

Horner looked visibly tired. But here was the first revelation of how he would act. And he did not command the room.

What followed was staggering. Given his position as Red Bull’s first full-time F1 driver, David Coulthard and Horner reminisced about securing the team’s first podium at the 2006 Monaco and the latter’s famed ‘naked’ swimming pool celebration (he actually jumped in wearing a cape).

The hall’s ceiling was soon being peppered by eyebrow hail above the pen where journalists had been told to gather, as the quips over “doing it [F1] the Red Bull way”, per Horner, continued. Given the seriousness of the investigation situation, it was either tone-deaf, utterly rebellious or a huge power move. Perhaps it was all at once.

Horner’s presence at the launch alone demonstrates he intends to stick around. The Red Bull team wants the investigation completed and dealt with before the 2024 season starts, but the decision-making goes above it to Red Bull Gmbh’s board and so could take weeks more still. And Horner could yet be called to give further evidence to the independent lawyer who interviewed him last Friday, plus submit additional information directly to the board.

When it came to the drivers soon set to take the RB20 to the track, both faced questions on the investigation in similarly seated scrums.

Reporters were told Max Verstappen would not be commenting at all, but when one question on Horner slipped through, he nevertheless answered underneath his press officer’s repeated insistence not to discuss the situation.

"It's the same as always, I can tell you that,” the Dutchman said of his relationship with Horner, before going on to rebuff reports of a rift between the pair in his typically no-nonsense style.

Verstappen insisted that his relationship with Horner remains unchanged

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I mean, I don't know who likes to write these kinds of things. But to me and Christian, it’s like always."

Questions to Perez came with no restrictions, but his answers were nevertheless of a similar note.

“We just want to go racing, we are a race team,” Perez said. “And we want the whole team to stay together, you know, because we've been so successful. It will be ideal just to keep the whole thing together and just focus on racing.”

Horner insisted “it's been very much business as normal” in terms of his continued work since the news of the investigation surfaced and that “the support has been fantastic”.

It’s just not how a team that in 2023 had F1’s best season would've wanted to start the next

His appearance in the shakedown video filmed at a wet Silverstone – where Red Bull staged a race between its first F1 car, the RB1, and the RB20 in a stunt that in part used experimental new camera technology – suggests things have carried on relatively normally.

But overall, Horner was nevertheless light on details of exactly what else he has been doing as his team’s preparations for another long campaign continue apace.

That these have been distracted alone is conspicuous.

In the important, the implications for how this might ultimately impact lives should not be forgotten. Ending in the trivial, it’s just not how a team that in 2023 had F1’s best season would've wanted to start the next.

And as every driver knows, when cars are involved, distraction can sometimes lead to disaster.

The fact that this issue has been a distraction is conspicuous

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool