Red Bull face race against time to meet deadline in messy Christian Horner saga

Red Bull Racing’s chief executive and team principal Christian Horner attended a meeting on Friday where he was quizzed on an allegation of inappropriate behaviour by a lawyer

A hearing into an allegation of inappropriate behaviour made against Red Bull chief Christian Horner by a colleague has reportedly ended without a resolution.

Horner, who denies the allegation, attended a meeting on Friday – which is claimed to have lasted eight hours – where he was quizzed on the matter by a lawyer and given the chance to share his side of the story. The 50-year-old remains in his post as Red Bull Racing’s chief executive and team principal, with Red Bull hoping to reach a decision about his future before their season launch event next week.

However, the BBC state that it is now ‘unclear’ whether everything will be resolved before the launch and that there are ‘even questions as to whether it will be completed in time for the start of the season’ which kicks off in Bahrain on March 2.

A spokesperson for Red Bull said: “It would not be appropriate to comment before the investigation is completed.” The report adds that they are still planning to go ahead with next week’s launch event despite the ongoing investigation.

If Red Bull do need to replace Horner, it is not clear who would step into his shoes as team principal. Red Bull Racing’s sporting director Jonathan Wheatley is an obvious candidate, while the managing director of the Red Bull parent company Oliver Mintzlaff is another.

Mintzlaff previously worked in the football side of the business, having previously worked as RB Leipzig’s chief executive. Pre-season testing is due to get underway in Bahrain on February 21, while the first Grand Prix of the new campaign will take place at the Sakhir circuit on March 2.

Red Bull head into the new season as defending champions, with Max Verstappen dominating the field on his way to a third world championship. And chief technical officer Adrian Newey is feeling confident that the team’s new car, the RB20, will bring them more success.

“Our car will be very much a third evolution of the ’22 car,” he told the Talking Bull podcast. “Last year’s car was an evolution of the ’22, the main points [of difference] being the normal winter development in terms of aerodynamics and some understanding on what we needed to do with suspension to try to improve the car as well, and getting weight out of it – because we never got down to the weight limit in ’22.

“This year’s car is the third evolution of that original RB18. Now what we don’t know, of course, is the third evolution too conservative while others have done something different? You just don’t know.

“There is that [dilemma] of: should we have a group that goes out and looks at completely left-field ideas, or do we keep developing the route we’ve taken? We’re resource limited, so we can’t do everything. We can’t look at every avenue, so we’ve taken the approach of developing what we’ve got. Hopefully that’ll be the prudent thing.”