F1 pundit feels Christian Horner was jealous of Toto Wolff's status at Mercedes

Former F1 commentator James Allen believes that former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was jealous of his counterpart at Mercedes, Toto Wolff, as the latter had a skin in the game being a shareholder as well. The Brit was sacked by the Austrian team at the end of the 2025 British Grand Prix last week, in a news that shocked the sport.

The 51-year-old had been the longest-serving team principal in F1, having been at the helm for over 20 years at the Milton Keynes outfit. Although Horner was the CEO and team principal of the F1 team, he still had to report to the Thai and Austrian ownership of Red Bull GmbH.

While appearing on the Red Flags podcast, James Allen believed that Toto Wolff and Adrian Newey, being shareholders in Mercedes and Aston Martin, had made Christian Horner jealous. While commenting on Horner's future, Allen said:

“My hunch, if he comes back to Formula 1, it would be in a team where he would be a shareholder, because he looks at Toto and he’s jealous of the fact that he’s a shareholder. He’s jealous of the fact that Adrian Newey got a shareholding for going to Aston Martin.

“So, it would need to be maybe buying Alpine with some Qatari investors or something and being a shareholder of that and building that into a team, or maybe one of the others. But I don’t think he would do a job again now where he was just an employee. I think he would need to have some skin in the game.” (44:10)

Christian Horner is linked with moves to Alpine and Ferrari; however, there has been no official confirmation from either party involved.

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Martin Brundle reflects on Christian Horner's exit from Red Bull

Former F1 driver and pundit Martin Brundle stated that focusing solely on Max Verstappen hurt Red Bull and could have been a catalyst in Christian Horner's departure from the team.

Speaking on the Sky F1 Show, the F1 pundit reflected and said:

“They did have a string of great drivers, of course, with David Coulthard, Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel, and Daniel Ricciardo. But we've also seen a lot of great young drivers who are still on the grid, like Albon and Gasly, wrecked, because Max is so unbelievably fast. I think the problem Christian had, is he had to focus everything on Max. That’s hurt the team, to an extent, in general.”

Christian Horner had always supported Max Verstappen's on-track actions staunchly and enabled the Dutch driver to secure his four successive driver's championships in the last four years.

However, Red Bull's decision to mold their car around Verstappen's extreme style compromised their development and setup for other drivers.