What happens when the maelstrom of Formula One gives way to quietude and contemplation? When the absence of relentless competition, pressure and intensity leaves only a disconcerting chasm it presents unfamiliar territory. For Red Bull’s Christian Horner it has been an opportunity too.
“The positive is it makes you appreciate the people around you more,” the team principal says. “Friends and family, situations like this make you take stock because this virus can affect anybody and there is nothing more precious and valuable than life. Particularly your loved and close ones.”
The 46-year-old is running his hugely successful racing team from home, with wife, Geri, and their children alongside him. Horner is homeschooling when ordinarily he would have been away for four grands prix and two test weekends – the frenetic opening to a season that would stretch until the end of November. With the engines silent he is enjoying time that has escaped the diktat of the calendar.
“The kids are loving it,” he says. “The upside is I get to see them and have had more bath times and bedtime stories than I have during any normal working week. I can step out of the office, read a story upstairs and come back 20 minutes later.”
This is a stocktaking he has clearly embraced during F1’s enforced break that still feels almost otherworldly to Horner as he adapts to a new reality and experiences. “I think it is the longest I have not been to a race circuit since I was 12,” he says. “It’s certainly the longest time I have spent in one place since I was at school. Recently, I had a FaceTime with David Coulthard. I haven’t had a FaceTime with him ever. He was sporting a very nautical-looking beard.”
Motor racing has been central to Horner’s life. He took to karting as a boy and moved up to single-seat cars in 1992. He stuck at driving until 1998 when he decided that, not quite as quick as his contemporaries, team management might be the ticket, having already co-founded the Arden Formula 3000 team in 1997.
It was clearly the right move and Red Bull came after him to lead their new team in 2005. He was the youngest team principal on the grid but unperturbed by the prospect. Red Bull returned four consecutive drivers’ and constructors’ championship doubles with Sebastian Vettel between 2010 and 2013. Building and leading the team to such triumphs was a remarkable achievement.
Horner is proud of the close-knit, family atmosphere he has worked hard to build at Red Bull, which he believes has been fundamental to their success. Maintaining it has been a focus despite Covid-19 restrictions. Horner is keeping up morale with what he dubs “town hall meetings”, mass virtual conferences on Zoom.
“It’s so important to create that sense of team because it is very unnatural for everyone not to be together. Our strength as a team has always been the way we operate and manage change. We react to problems and fix them. We are doing all sorts of things to keep in contact, online fitness classes or pub quizzes to keep that sense of team.”
Some of those personnel have been busy as part of the Project Pitlane initiative, F1 putting its expertise to work in tackling coronavirus. Red Bull worked flat out with colleagues from Renault on designing and building a ventilator system. It was ready to go into production but then judged as no longer required by the government as their understanding of how to treat Covid-19 advanced. Horner nonetheless believed it showed the teams and F1 in their best light.
“It was a phenomenal effort,” he says. “What we were able to achieve, to get a working prototype ready for assembly to go into the field was an enormous effort and something the whole team can be very proud of.”
Horner’s drivers have been enjoying themselves with racing online. Max Verstappen already enjoyed virtual racing, while Alexander Albon has enthusiastically embraced the new challenge. Their extended absence from the real thing may make racing all the more fascinating when it resumes.
“This is probably the longest time all the drivers have been out of a seat,” Horner says. “That could be healthy in a way. If we begin again in July, they will all be rusty as hell and there will be some incidents.”
Having weathered the years of Mercedes dominance, Red Bull look closer than ever to taking the fight to them this season. Engine supplier Honda is on the coattails of Mercedes and Ferrari, and Verstappen looked impressive and confident during testing.
“You remain itching to get going,” says a frustrated Horner. “The competitor within craves to get going, to get racing. It is unnatural for drivers and team members to be sitting on their hands when we would usually be racing.”
Even while enjoying time with his family, banishing the sense that something is missing has been all but impossible. The racer, it seems, will out. “When you don’t experience something for a long time you realise how much you love it and how much you miss it,” he says.