Red Bull firing Christian Horner puts the team in a tough spot, feels insider

Jolyon Palmer reckons that Red Bull firing Christian Horner out of the blue mid-season has put the team in a tough spot. In a move that shocked the F1 world, the Austrian team announced that its team principal was being removed with immediate effect.

The move came as a shock, as Christian Horner has been one of the foundational members at Red Bull. He was the first person that Dietrich Mateschitz and Helmut Marko hired to lead the team.

Since then, Christian Horner led the squad for two decades and during this time brought a lot of success to the team. As Horner leaves the team, he leaves with as many as 14 world titles in a 20-year association.

While the move does come as a shock to a lot of people, the haphazard nature of the move seems a bit evident, as the brand has moved Laurent Mekies from the junior team. Talking about the entire situation on the F1 Nation Podcast, Jolyon Palmer admitted that the team was in a tough spot at the moment. He said,

“Yeah, I mean, surprised at the timing. I think there’s been a lot of fallout at Red Bull [over] the last 18 months, so there have been many, many high-profile names leaving the team, including Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley."

He added,

“I think there was a sense that, with things falling away this year, Christian was under pressure. But I completely agree that the timing and the suddenness of this post-Silverstone, I think it’s caught everyone off guard, and I feel like it leaves Red Bull in a real tight spot as well in terms of, obviously, Laurent [Mekies] stepping up. But it’s a big job for him, because Red Bull is such a different beast to the B team.”

Without Max Verstappen, Red Bull is a tailender

Talking about the gravity of the situation at the Austrian team, Jolyon Palmer said that if Max Verstappen is not a part of the team anymore, the squad is as good as a backmarker right now. Almost all the points of the team have been scored by the Dutchman, showing the level of dependency that exists. Palmer said,

“Because of all the success that Red Bull have had, and very recently, the way the wheels have fallen off the wagon, it’s been pretty extreme, given there’s been no major overhaul of regulations that we’ve seen in the past to take over what is an established front-running team,”

He added,

“Without Max, at the moment, they’re tailenders. So to try and work out how to make the car drivable, then put the right drivers in, is a really big undertaking."

It would be interesting to see what is in store for the team in the future. Whether Max Verstappen continues to be a part of the squad or leaves is certainly a question that quite a few have been asking in the paddock as well.

Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli