Bernie Ecclestone says Horner “got away with so many things”

Reflecting on Red Bull’s decision to oust Christian Horner with immediate effect, former Formula One’ supremo Bernie Ecclectone states that Christian Horner “got away with so many thing.”

Just two days after last Sunday's British Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing announced that Christian Horner will leave the team with immediate effect.

The Briton has been at the helm for almost the entire team's history in F1 but his exit follows a couple of troublesome years of internal struggles since Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz passed away.

Horner has been in charge of Red Bull since the team entered the sport in 2025, serving as team principal for two decades. During that time, the 51-year-old Briton has led Red Bull to six constructors' and eight drivers' world championship titles.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Ecclectone, who was Horner’s best man at his wedding to Geri Halliwell in 2015, branded his close friend Horner as an “idiot” and suggested the ex-Red Bull boss should’ve treaded more carefully.

“It would probably have been better if they had said, 'Come in, Christian, sit down. But the bottom line is that there are people there who thought he was getting away with things, that he was acting as if it was not the Red Bull Ring, but the Christian Horner Ring.

"He got away with so many things. And all the time you're delivering, people close their eyes. But when you stop delivering, people start looking. One or two begin thinking, 'Well, I could do a better job.’

"I know it was suggested to him he should be a team manager and leave the commercial side to somebody else.

"His idea was, 'I am the chief executive.' [But] you get very few executives who can do everything, from engineering to public relations. He had been running the company the way he thought it should be run.

“For a long time, people were prepared to say, 'OK, fair enough, he's getting the job done.' But as soon as you go off a little bit, people look and say, 'Hang on.'"

At the beginning of last year, Horner was twice cleared of sexual misconduct after an allegation from a former Red Bull employee. However, his future at the helm of Red Bull had been a talking point since then.

"This business that he got involved with 18 months ago, he was just an idiot. He was a 50-year-old who thought he was 20, thought he was one of the boys,” Ecclestone concluded.