Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff admits it’s been an adjustment not seeing rival Christian Horner in the paddock anymore. The Brit had to leave Red Bull shortly after the British Grand Prix, and since then, the Austrian has had to navigate each race weekend without his ‘great adversary’. ‘It’s strange to walk around the paddock without Christian,’ Wolff concedes.
Formula 1 is in the midst of its third Grand Prix since 2005 without Christian Horner as Red Bull team boss. The Brit was dismissed shortly after his home race in Silverstone. For team boss Toto Wolff, the absence of his rival took some getting used to. “Christian said to me: ‘What are you going to do now, because you love to hate me and now I’m gone’,” Wolff recounts in Zandvoort. “It’s a mixed feeling. On one hand, he achieved a lot, he was one of the most successful team bosses in F1. He was certainly respected in Milton Keynes (Red Bull’s headquarters).”
“But on the other hand, we often didn’t see eye to eye,” the Mercedes team boss continues. “He has been a great adversary all these years.” Does Wolff secretly miss the former team boss a little? “It’s strange to walk around the circuit here and Christian isn’t there. Laurent Mekies is much more pragmatic, you can talk to him more about the long term.”
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
With Horner’s departure, Wolff and Ferrari team boss Frédéric Vasseur are the two most experienced team bosses. “Every movie has a good, a bad, and an ugly,” Wolff refers to the famous Western film. “Now that the bad one is gone, only Fred and I are left. Fred just had to think for a moment when I told him that,” the Austrian jokes.
