‘CHRISTIAN HORNER WANTS CONTROL AND POWER’ AS TRUE RED BULL DESIRE SUGGESTED BY DAVID CROFT

Sky F1 commentator David Croft believes the “animosity” from the side of Christian Horner towards Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff comes from wanting the “control” and “power” which Wolff has.

While on the track Red Bull are as dominant as ever, the main talking point earlier in the F1 2024 season was an apparent power struggle which threatened to tear this ultra-successful team apart, with the futures of Horner, senior advisor Helmut Marko and star driver Max Verstappen all coming under serious doubt.

Does Christian Horner envy Toto Wolff’s ‘power’ and ‘control’?

Such tensions have since calmed, though that has not stopped Wolff from publicly stating his desire to lure Verstappen over to Mercedes, which after the latest race in China, received a rather fiery verbal retaliation from Horner, marking a continuation of this spiky professional relationship between the team bosses.

And when appearing on the Sky F1 podcast, Croft revealed his theory that Horner wants the same influence which Wolff has over at Mercedes as not only a team principal, but as a one-third owner of the team too.

“I think Christian and Toto will carry on the war of words for their entirety of their time in Formula 1,” said Croft.

“It will just carry on. They’ve got a history, they’ve got a present and I think they’ve got a future when it comes to not agreeing with certain things.

“Toto is doing everything that you would expect one of your rivals to do and if your driver is making it public that he might leave, he’s going to put his arm around him, he’s going to tell him that he’s the most important person on the planet and ‘come over to us, the grass is much greener at Brackley than it is at Milton Keynes’.

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“The one thing that I think is always going to wind Christian up a little bit as well is that for all the success at Red Bull, for all the titles, the trophies, the race wins that they’re enjoying at the moment, Toto Wolff is a co-owner of a Formula 1 team and Christian Horner isn’t.

“And I don’t think that goes down very well with Christian. I think if you said to him, ‘Would you like to be a co-owner of that Red Bull team?’ Of course he would. He wants control. He wants power and Toto’s got that because he is a one-third owner of Mercedes.

“And Christian Horner, he might be a CEO and he might be a team principal, but he’s a paid employee of the Red Bull Formula 1 team, so he hasn’t got that autonomy to make decisions in the way that Toto has and I think a lot of the animosity on Christian’s side maybe stems from that. But I think Toto also knows how to wind Christian up as well.”

Horner’s Red Bull team usurped Mercedes as the dominant force of Formula 1, with Verstappen looking well set for his fourth World Championship win in succession and Red Bull a third consecutive title double.

2024-04-25T07:39:42Z dg43tfdfdgfd