Christian Horner sack ‘a long time in the making’ as Nico Rosberg weighs in
Christian Horner
Nico Rosberg, the former Mercedes driver and Sky F1 pundit, believes Christian Horner’s sacking by Red Bull was “a long time in the making.”
And the 2016 World Champion says it feels “completely unreal” to think that Horner is no longer in charge of the team he built into a winning machine.
Nico Rosberg: Christian Horner sack ‘a long time in the making’
This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix marks the first race in Red Bull’s two-decade history without Christian Horner at the helm.
The 51-year-old was sacked by the Milton Keynes-based team in the aftermath of the last race in Britain, with Racing Bulls boss Laurent Mekies installed as his replacement as CEO and team principal.
The Mekies era got off to a winning start on Saturday at Spa, where reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen took victory in the sprint race.
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Verstappen will start today’s main race from fourth place on the grid with team-mate Yuki Tsunoda qualifying an impressive seventh after a poor run of form.
Horner endured a tumultuous final 18 months in charge of Red Bull, with Verstappen’s father Jos leading calls for the long-serving team principal to resign.
The elder Verstappen also warned after the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix that the Red Bull team would “explode” if Horner remained in place, with the team since losing key pillars of their success like Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley, now of Aston Martin and Sauber respectively.
Verstappen, who stormed to a fourth consecutive title last year, sits a distant third in the current standings having been restricted to just two wins so far in F1 2025.
Appearing on Sky F1’s coverage of the sprint race in Belgium, Rosberg admitted it is strange to think that Horner is no longer in charge of the team he led to a total of eight Drivers’ titles and six Constructors’ World Championships since his appointment in 2005.
Rosberg said: “Christian Horner is not here anymore, which is unthinkable. That’s completely unreal.
“It was a big, big shock and surprise to everybody – including a surprise to him.
“He didn’t see it coming at all, nor did anybody in the team.
“But of course, it was a long time in the making.
“It was coming from last year, from all the issues that he’d been having there, so I think this was just a result of that.
“But nobody really still knows 100 per cent what exactly happened.”
Rosberg’s fellow pundit Martin Brundle initially pointed the finger at Verstappen’s entourage in the immediate aftermath of Horner’s dismissal, accusing ‘Team Verstappen’ of playing a “key role” in Red Bull’s decision.
In a fresh assessment at Spa, however, Brundle appeared to backtrack slightly on his original comments by insisting that the Verstappen camp did not drive the call.
Yet he argued that Verstappen almost certainly had the power to prevent Horner from being sacked “and chose not to” intervene.
It came after Verstappen himself told media including PlanetF1.com on Thursday at Spa that he is merely “the driver” with the decision to part with Horner made by the senior Red Bull management and shareholders.
Speaking on Friday in Belgium, Brundle said: “I was very surprised [by Red Bull’s decision].
“The urgency, the finality of it, the summary dismissal in the middle of the season after everything Christian’s achieved with the team over the last 20 years. The championships and victories are quite extraordinary.
“They’ve had a difficult one-and-a-half years, but they’ve still won races – and they won last year’s championship, of course, with Max.
“They’ve been on pole and won a couple of races too, so it didn’t feel like it was emergency action stations but that’s something they chose to do.
“I’ve had a long chat with Christian. I’ve spoken to Jos Verstappen. We’ve heard from Max Verstappen.
“I put a request in to talk to Oliver Mintzlaff and Dr Helmut Marko here. That hasn’t happened yet.
“But it seems clear that it was a decision from Austria. It wasn’t the Verstappens asking for this.
“Jos Verstappen has thrown a lot of hand grenades in over the past 16 months, some of them have gone off, and he made it clear he thought he Christian should move on from time to time.
“But it wasn’t about the Verstappens.
“It was the management in Austria wanting to take back control of some of the commercial side of it.
“Christian didn’t want to let that go because he felt, in the round, the drivers, the cost cap, the sponsors, the employment of people was all one big story that he wanted to keep hold of and so they made that decision.
“Presumably Max could have, if he’d have wanted to, stopped it from happening – but he either chose not to or couldn’t.
“I’m going to assume he chose not to stop Christian being let go.
“So they are where they find themselves today. They have an expression: ‘It’s all about the can.’
“And they felt that they want to do something with Red Bull going forward.
“Maybe it was a bit too much about Christian and not enough about Red Bull, let’s wait to see what they say about that.
“So there are any number of factors, but I’d imagine Christian sitting home watching this, for the first time not in the paddock for 20 years, feeling pretty sad about it.”
More on Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing from PlanetF1.com
Despite being officially under contract until the end of the 2028 season, Verstappen has been heavily linked with a move to Mercedes for F1 2026 over recent weeks.
However, the four-time World Champion is now set to remain with Red Bull for next season.
Mercedes could even announce that its current driver lineup of George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli will remain in place for F1 2026 ahead of next weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the final race before F1’s summer break.
Russell, who has entered the final six months of his current Mercedes deal, is set to be rewarded with a contract extension after enjoying his best-ever start to a season, culminating in his victory in Canada last month.
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