A week ago, this long-running tug-of-war finally came to an end. While the exact amount hasn’t been officially announced, filings from the UK Companies House confirmed that on August 13th Red Bull officially terminated their contract with Christian Horner. The compensation was reportedly in the eight-figure range, though far from the rumored $80 million. The key point is that from that day on, the Briton became a free agent.
According to reports from German motorsport media, Cadillac could be Horner’s next destination, but it’s not that straightforward. First of all, Andreas Lauda currently holds a secure position as team principal, while Horner would undoubtedly be aiming for a higher-level executive role—something closer to what Zak Brown enjoys as a team CEO. Secondly, rumors suggest that the Red Bull employee who accused Horner of misconduct has already been hired by Cadillac, casting further doubt on the credibility of this scenario.
At present, Laurent Mekies is nominally in charge at Milton Keynes, though unlike Horner, he doesn’t juggle multiple CEO roles across Red Bull’s wider structure. According to reports, Red Bull Racing is now effectively overseen by two executive directors: Oliver Mintzlaff and Helmut Marko. Mintzlaff, an Austrian who’s been with Red Bull since 2007, primarily oversees human resources. In motorsport terms, he’s an outsider—more of an HR heavyweight than a racing strategist. This restructuring appears to be an Austrian-driven move designed to empower Marko, with Mintzlaff serving as a stabilizer. Whether Mintzlaff’s appointment is permanent or temporary is still unclear, but putting someone with no sporting background in charge of such a critical F1 division seems motivated by one thing: to untangle the chaos Red Bull currently finds itself in, particularly as a growing number of staff have walked away.
In racing operations, however, authority now largely rests with Helmut Marko, who, backed by Oliver Mintzlaff, has emerged victorious from this power struggle. The problem is that Marko, given his age and current capacity, hardly looks like the right person to restructure Red Bull or lead it out of its crisis.
To complicate matters further, Marko hasn’t just been handed leadership of Red Bull Racing. He’s also been put in charge of Red Bull Powertrains, Red Bull Advanced Technologies, and Red Bull Advanced Services. In each of these roles, he must work alongside Alasdair Yule, the company’s financial chief. In the long run, Red Bull will almost certainly look for fresh external leaders to run its subsidiaries, but the bigger problem is that very few candidates would be willing to step into such a volatile situation—especially at a time when the organization is still adjusting and uncertainty is rife.
Recruiting new engineers and executives might only be a matter of time, but for now, the team faces a rocky transitional phase. With next year’s new regulations looming, the challenges for Marko are only growing more daunting.
The roots of this crisis stretch back a few months, when Red Bull’s Thai shareholders transferred 2% of their stake to a Swiss trust. This stripped the Yoovidhya family of their veto power and handed decisive leverage to the Swiss entity. In hindsight, the Thai backers undermined themselves by siding with Horner—only to eventually abandon him and side with corporate stability. Inevitably, Horner became a casualty of this internal power struggle.
Yet, in the long term, removing both Horner’s authoritarian grip and the Thai family’s dominance could prove to be the right decision. Left unchecked, Horner’s autocratic leadership might well have bred corruption within the team.
Now, Red Bull can finally set its sights on rebuilding. But the process of tearing down old structures and replacing them with new ones is far harder than it sounds—perhaps even more difficult than the team’s early struggles when it was founded in 2005. With the sweeping 2026 regulation changes on the horizon, there’s a real risk that over-adjustment could actually accelerate the team’s decline.
The biggest challenge will be finding the right people to do what Red Bull does best. At the moment, Helmut Marko simply doesn’t look capable of fulfilling that role. That means Red Bull is likely to remain mired in turbulence for some time to come. All we can do now is wait and see.
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