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Former Red Bull Racing team principal, Christian Horner, once revealed how he took Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber to a children's hospital during their racing days to manage the feud that grew between the drivers. Both of them had been competing with each other fiercely, and the rivalry had begun hurting the team.
Sebastian Vettel was the dominating force on the grid in the early 2010s, with Red Bull experiencing their first dominant stint. At the same time, however, his teammate Mark Webber was also a strong driver. This led to both of them being engaged in on-track battles, and their rivalry grew sour when Vettel did not let him pass in Malaysia, 2013, despite team orders. The duo was also involved in a crash later.
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This began hurting Red Bull as they started losing points. Christian Horner, who had been managing the team as their principal since 2005, took matters into his own hands. Speaking on the High Performance podcast, he recalled taking the two drivers to a children's hospital with David Coulthard, and made them realize what "real life" issues actually were, and that the two drivers were not fighting for something essential.
"I thought I needed to deflate this and need to put things into perspective here at the end of the day. You know, we're not saving lives, we're a sport that's an entertainment," Horner said.
"I got both drives and I took them with David Coulthard, actually, to Great Ormond Street to meet some of the kids that were having a tough time and also importantly the parents and to spend a morning there with those kids and parents and some of their heartache and you know that that was real life issues."
Horner aimed to generate mutual respect between Vettel and Webber, as he added:
"It just demonstrated that okay we've got it pretty good you know and actually to respect each other's not you know with the challenges that these poor children and their parents and the anguish that they had what we do is nothing."
Christian Horner was the longest-serving team principal on the Formula 1 grid. He managed Red Bull Racing for twenty years before he and the team split ways earlier this year.
F1 insider speculates on Christian Horner's future plan
Horner is arguably one of the most successful team principals in F1 history. Under him, RBR won eight Drivers' and six Constructors' championships and dominated the grid in two different regulatory eras.
He was expected to return to racing in the future; however, F1 insider Craig Slater believes that the 51-year-old wouldn't be looking for a job anymore. Slater suggested that Horner would rather invest in a team and buy an ownership stake.
"Christian Horner is not looking for a job, he's looking for a stake in a team and that's his focus right now," he claimed. "In terms of the specifics of the alleged approach to Haas, they've explained to me that it was an intermediary that set up the meeting but it wasn't something Horner sought to set up himself."
Christian Horner was attached with Haas previously, hinting towards a return with the American team; however, there has been no official confirmation regarding the same.
