How Red Bull changed post-Christian Horner

On 9 July 2025, the news of Christian Horner’s shock ousting as Red Bull Racing’s F1 boss sent shockwaves through the paddock.

Bringing an end to a 20-year period which yielded two dominant, title winning dynasties, Horner was removed following a protracted political battle within Red Bull, with a wide array of dominoes all contributing to a sensational end result.

In came Laurent Mekies, a well-regarded figure formerly heading up sister team Racing Bulls, as Red Bull Austria opted to run a tighter ship, rather than letting one figure amass total control over Milton Keynes.

Evolution, not revolution

When Mekies got his feet under the desk, his first point of order was to get the lay of the land rather than push through drastic changes. A clean break suggests Red Bull needed to start from scratch, but that obviously wasn’t the case. The large majority of the people who made Red Bull successful in 2022 were still there, and it would also sell Horner’s own monumental contributions short.

It also took Mekies time to understand what made a team of over 1000 staff tick, and where he could make subtle improvements to get the best out of them. “I still look at these guys as most people outside of the team look at them,” Mekies said in his first public announcement since taking over the role. “We look at you guys and we see the very best people in the world at what they do. The focus will really be on making sure that all the talented people here have what they need to perform at their best, because they are already the very best.”

That didn’t mean Mekies didn’t make any changes, especially trackside. Despite refusing to take credit, Mekies did bring a more engineering oriented approach, and asked his engineers the right questions. “I do like how Laurent is working, very motivated, constantly asking the right questions to me, but also to the team. I think it’s nice to see,” Verstappen said after a few weekends of working under the Frenchman.

Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing Team Principal

Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images

Mekies was at least partially credited with Red Bull finding some solutions to its handling problems with the 2025 car, which enabled Verstappen to turn up the heat on McLaren until the bitter end. It was a promising start to the post-Horner era.

But at that stage Red Bull’s biggest challenges still lay ahead, in the form of the double whammy of 2026’s radical regulations overhaul and the squad building its in-house power units for the very first time, the brainchild of Horner.

Playing the political game as Red Bull becomes a manufacturer

To Horner’s credit, Red Bull Ford Powertrains, under former Mercedes man Ben Hodgkinson, has defied expectations with a potent V6 engine, while there is still a lot of work to be done on the electric side and on the RB22’s start procedure.

But it now also appears that Red Bull might be a victim of that early success, with it set to be frozen out of engine upgrades as its engine was determined to be the most powerful of the grid. Red Bull has disputed this and asked the FIA to commission a thorough review, but Motorsport.com understands that review has only confirmed the governing body’s initial findings and has been a frustrating experience.

Does Red Bull have the right to feel aggrieved or has it been outmanoeuvred by the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes? Time will tell. But Horner was and still is a master politician and communicator, and amid the controversy over the 2026 rules and the ADUO upgrade scheme, one wonders if the former boss would have had a different approach.

Fixing Red Bull’s second seat syndrome

If one good thing had come out of 2026 for Red Bull, it’s that its second seat syndrome appears to be cured. Following a range of drivers who struggled to make the seat alongside Verstappen their own, Red Bull’s former junior driver Isack Hadjar has broken that spell with an impressive start to life at Red Bull Racing, confirming the instant performance he displayed at the satellite team in his 2025 rookie campaign. Hadjar took third on the grid at his first time of asking in Melbourne, and climbed the podium in Monaco even if that was later handed back to Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Hadjar being able to deliver is more likely the by-product of the all-new regulations than anything the team could have deliberately done, as well as a credit to the young Frenchman’s mental fortitude under the spotlights of the big team.

Groundhog day as Max Verstappen rumours flare up and staff turnover continues

The good thing is that Hadjar isn’t significantly struggling more for confidence and car balance than Verstappen. The bad news is that both drivers are going through it. And that has triggered inevitable speculation over the team’s prized asset.

It wouldn’t be an F1 season without rumours linking Verstappen to rival team, or indeed an early F1 retirement over how much the Dutchman is disillusioned with the current rulebook. What the future holds is something only the four-time world champion knows, despite what attention seekers on the internet may profess to know.

But the job ahead for Mekies is the same one as it was for Horner, and that’s ensuring all circumstances are right for Verstappen to see out his contract and for all those rumours to come to nothing.

Having back-to-back rear wing failures won’t help inspire confidence, and the team is now going through another crunch to find meaningful solutions to its shortcomings, whether operationally or in terms of pure performance.

This comes against the backdrop of more key Red Bull staffers either having left or heading to the exit door shortly. Since Horner’s ousting a year ago, the team also parked long-time Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, while Verstappen’s long-time ally and race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase has signed a deal to head to McLaren by 2028 and Paul Monaghan looks set to leave for Cadillac.

Gianpiero Lambiase, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

Is Red Bull’s brain drain real or there is too much attention on some of its departures, simply because of their media profile? Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The name of the game hasn’t changed for Mekies though. The only thing that truly matters is building the fastest car. And if not this year, then putting all the people and tools in place to ensure that you can next year.

If Mekies can reassure Verstappen that that’s the case, and the Dutchman isn’t too fed up with F1 as a whole to do something else with his life, then everything else will fall into place.

In case it still needed to be said, what matters to the Verstappens is the same thing that matters to every other driver. It’s all about winning. That was the case under Horner, and it still is 12 months on.

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– The Motorsport.com Team