Christian Horner reveals exactly what message his former rival Toto Wolff sent him after his sacking at Red Bull. The two had sparred regularly during the Brit’s final years at the Austrian outfit, but Wolff, Horner discloses in Netflix’s Drive To Survive, admitted he would miss the ex-team principal after his exit from Formula 1. “On the one hand you’ve certainly been a real bastard,” Wolff wrote to his British rival. “But the sport will genuinely miss you.”
In July, after twenty years of service, Christian Horner’s Red Bull career came to an end. The Brit was replaced by Laurent Mekies, a move influenced by disappointing results in the first half of the season. During his time with the Austrian team, Red Bull won the drivers’ title eight times — four with Sebastian Vettel and four with Max Verstappen — and six constructors’ championships. That record made Horner the second-most successful team principal on the grid, behind his major rival Toto Wolff.
In his closing years at the helm Horner frequently clashed with Wolff. Still, the Austrian immediately sent a text as soon as he heard Horner had been dismissed. In the new season of Netflix’s docuseries Drive To Survive the Brit reads Wolff’s message aloud. “I didn’t really know what to say, because on the one hand you have certainly been a proper bastard,” the Mercedes team principal wrote to Horner. “But on the other hand the sport will really miss you as one of the leading figures.”
‘PS: You need to get a haircut’
“Who am I going to fight now?” Wolff then asks himself. “And who am I going to ‘hate with pleasure’, as you always put it so nicely? Wolff and Horner together have won fourteen of the last fifteen world championships. Not a bad stat.” Horner immediately reveals his reply to the Mercedes team principal. “I have enjoyed battling you all these years. So thanks for the rivalry, the competition and the push. No one else even came close, as the statistics show. I wish you all the best for the future. PS: You need to get a haircut.”
