Red Bull Would Be Mad to Sack Christian Horner Despite Poor 2015 F1 Season
The fastest car. The finest driver. The best team principal.
Despite the evolution of the sport over the generations—the ever-changing sporting and technical regulations—it is comforting that these three elements, the Holy Trinity, remain the key to victory in Formula One.
Just as a football club requires a dependable goalkeeper, a trustworthy defender, at least one solid midfielder and a reliable striker, an F1 team with serious aspirations of long-lasting success needs a spine, a stable platform on which to build.
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Take a look through the history of F1, and you'll realise the most dominant spells have been a simple by-product of the car-driver-boss combination.
Ayrton Senna and Ron Dennis at McLaren-Honda. Nigel Mansell and Sir Frank Williams at the team that bears his name. Michael Schumacher and Jean Todt at Ferrari and, currently, Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff at Mercedes.
Throughout their four seasons at the summit of the sport, Red Bull Racing had as strong a spine as any team to ever grace F1.
A combined total of eight world championships and 47 grand prix victories for driver and team were the inevitable result of Sebastian Vettel's intimate relationship with his cars—each one an advancement on its predecessor—under the stewardship of Christian Horner.
Their nine-race winning run at the end of the 2013 season was the only way for their dominant spell to come to a close, yet the crumbling of Red Bull's "dream team" over the last 18 months has been saddening.
And it has given greater meaning to Vettel's plea at the 2013 United States Grand Prix, as reported by Sky Sports' Pete Gill, to "remember these days" and "enjoy them while they last."
The first to go was the fastest car, swiftly followed by the man behind the car.
It took only six races of the V6 turbo era for Adrian Newey, the greatest designer in F1 history, to decide that the new formula, one in which his creative intellect was stifled by horsepower, wasn't for him.
After rejecting a switch to Ferrari, according to the Guardian's Paul Weaver, Newey signed a new deal with Red Bull on the eve of last season's Canadian GP, freeing him to walk away from "day-to-day involvement" in a sport that had grown tiresome.
The next to leave was the finest driver.
Vettel, unable to rotate Red Bull's 2014 car in the style he'd perfected in previous seasons and beaten by a team-mate for the first time, made the move Newey neglected, joining Ferrari to restart his career.
The departures of his closest allies has left the team principal as the last man standing, but it seems Horner is on increasingly shaky ground after Red Bull's worst start to a season since 2008.
According to the Times' Kevin Eason, Horner received a phone call on the morning of last weekend's Austrian GP, Red Bull's home race, from a "rival team principal," who explained their sorrow at the news the 41-year-old was to be replaced by Gerhard Berger, the 10-time race winner and former Scuderia Toro Rosso boss.
Horner told Eason how he was "shocked" by the call and "had no idea people were talking about me that way," yet Berger's frequent visits to the paddock in recent months—he was even caught wearing a Red Bull-branded jacket on the Spielberg grid—suggests there is a hint of truth behind the latest rumour.
Quite why Dietrich Mateschitz, the head of the Red Bull empire, would even contemplate sacking Horner, who despite his team's fall from grace remains the best boss in the pit lane—finding a way of retaining Newey, when it seemed certain Adrian was Ferrari-bound, was a masterstroke—is something of a mystery.
It is, after all, common knowledge that Red Bull's failure to secure more than three wins since the beginning of 2014, and their inability to claim a podium finish in the first eight races of this season, is not due to fundamental issues within the team's hierarchy but the problems suffered by Renault, their inept engine suppliers.
Red Bull's long-running feud with the French manufacturer indicates the team have no doubt where the blame for their loss of form lies, and Mateschitz himself joined the Renault-bashing ahead of the Austrian race, telling Speed Week (h/t BBC Sport), "They take from us not only time and money, but also the will and motivation."
Yet perhaps that is precisely why the company may be considering discarding Horner, treating this barren spell as an opportunity to mark a fresh start in Red Bull's F1 project.
Maybe Christian, like Adrian and Seb before him, is becoming increasingly frustrated by the team's lack of competitiveness and is coming to the realisation that Red Bull's glory days have been and gone.
Or perhaps Mateschitz and Co. are unimpressed that the "old man" in this youth-obsessed team, with his high-profile marriage, is more recognisable than the drivers whose careers Red Bull have invested countless funds in progressing.
Any reasons for dismissing the team principal, however, would be trivial compared to the effect the loss of Horner, a loyal servant for more than a decade, would have on Red Bull as a front-running Formula One outfit.
Scapegoating Horner for Renault's crimes would send Red Bull firmly down the path of Ferrari, who spent years chasing their tails after ruthlessly sacking several staff members for failing to win a title of any kind since '08.
Chris Dyer, for instance, was dismissed soon after Fernando Alonso lost the title to Vettel, Horner and Red Bull in 2010. Felipe Massa, likewise, was released at the end of 2013 for failing to match expectations and was replaced by Kimi Raikkonen, whose arrival only had the effect of alienating Alonso.
And for the Prancing Horse's struggles in turning around its fortunes in 2014, stalwarts including Stefano Domenicali and Luca di Montezemolo were handed over to the firing squad as Ferrari formally entered disarray.
Despite their shortage of results in 2015, Red Bull can take solace from the fact that very few, if any, of their barriers to success are self-made.
But if the team add to their problems by sacking Horner, the final member of Red Bull's Holy Trinity, they will not just lose the best team principal in the business; they will lose their last remaining strand of title-winning DNA.
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