The Day After Tomorrow: Interview with Christian Horner

Last Friday, just seven days before making his racing debut in Formula One as the new team boss of Red Bull Racing, the first thing Christian Horner said, as he welcomed me into his modest office - just up the stairs from the entrance of the factory in a non-descript industrial area near Milton Keynes, is;"Sorry about the green carpet on the floor." It's a strange opening gambit, but it's clearly been weighing on his mind - the carpet is an unintended reminder of Them, the ones that were there before him, the ones who used to own the team but fell by the wayside.

Horner has been the occupant of that office for six weeks, and he's had a few more pressing tasks than replacing the carpet or the signs outside, newly modest and draped with a tarpaulin. Those six weeks have been spent shaking hands and weighing up the people who are responsible for enacting his decisions, in looking and watching everything at the factory and at the tests to see how it all slots together, in pushing forward with the programme that was set to run right up to thirty minutes after I leave, when he was due to catch a flight to Australia.