Years After F1 Veteran’s Sarcastic Jab, Christian Horner Unveils Reasons to Drop His “Stupid” Passion for Building Red Bull’s Dynasty

In a sport that has obviously been dominated by racing drivers, only a few men have distinguished themselves sitting behind a desk. Formula 1, and motorsport in general is the staple of people who have fallen in love with the idea of romanticizing risk. No matter how cutting-edge the technology gets, at the very core of it, F1 appeals to the fans and the drivers due to its inherent dalliance with death at speeds in excess of comprehension. Then why do we have people like Christian Horner dreaming to make a living out of the management side of things?

In today’s landscape of F1, Horner has registered himself as one of the all-time greats this sport has seen. But the legacy he’s built hasn’t been on the race track. He’s built Red Bull from the ground up, and gotten them to the dominance we have come to know. But if he has such a blessed racing brain, why didn’t he try his hand at being an F1 driver himself?

Christian Horner is neither fast nor brave

Horner never really made it far enough to reach F1. And this is a fact that his contemporaries always remind him of. Famously at the 2014 Singapore GP, in a now-viral exchange, Horner was joking around with Martin Brundle. Horner said to Brundle, “It’s a shame you’re too old to have driven here really.” To which Brundle quickly retorted. “Shame you wasn’t fast enough to get into Formula 1!”

Surely in a bid to clarify his racing record, Horner was recently quoted by Motorsport.com as saying, “I stopped racing because I had made it all the way to the Formula 2 level. You realize that as the cars get stronger, things get riskier. Disconnecting your head from your heart can be quite difficult at times, and I was not prepared to take those risks.”

“At one point the self-preservation instinct kicked in and [I] said ‘racing is stupid,’ and that’s when I knew it was time to quit.” [Translated via Google Translate]

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Given Horner’s lack of commitment to the craft, it probably makes more sense now why he chose to stick with Max Verstappen.

How Horner’s risk averse approach gave Max Verstappen a shot at F1

Horner knew what it took to become a racing driver, and a good one at that. Naturally, when he knew he didn’t have that in him, he spent the rest of his days finding that driver elsewhere. At least until he met Max Verstappen.

Horner once told the Guardian, “What stood out was Spa, when he drove round the outside of Felipe Nasr,” while revealing the moment he knew Verstappen had to be promoted to the senior team. But the defining moment was when he saw in Verstappen what he had hoped to see in himself.

He continued, “I thought: ‘This boy is properly brave, committed and quick.’ You saw it that season, he was a shining star. It was evident immediately he was a prodigious talent.”

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It’s no surprise that with Horner’s supreme racing acumen and Verstappen’s racing grit that the two have started a dynasty in F1 with Red Bull that threatens to break every known record out there in this sport.