Guenther Steiner: Timing of Christian Horner’s Red Bull exit “very off”

Guenther Steiner, who previously held the position of technical operations director at Red Bull in 2005, has spoken out on Christian Horner’s shock exit from the Milton Keynes outfit.

Red Bull Racing announced the immediate exit of Horner on Wednesday. The reason for his exit has not been confirmed at this stage; however, the team has been struggling with performance in the 2025 Formula 1 season, and to make matter worse, there have been rumours that four-time champion Max Verstappen is considering a move to Mercedes.

Steiner worked with Horner during the early days at Red Bull after the team took over Jaguar Racing. The Italian joined at almost the same time as Horner – Steiner as technical operations director and Horner as team principal. However, by the end of the 2005 season, Steiner was approached by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz with the proposition of joining the NASCAR team in the United States, which he did.

“Yeah, I worked with him in the beginning,” Steiner explained on The Red Flags Podcast. “I worked with him over a year in the beginning. We started almost together. He started one month before me. So, yeah, I was pretty surprised as well when it happened.

“I mean, you know that there was something going on at Red Bull. I think we all were aware of it. We cannot say ‘oh we didn’t know that something was going on’ because it’s more than a year now since we had the whatever it was called – that scandal in the beginning of last year. It wasn’t happy days anymore at Red Bull, I would say, but I didn’t expect it.

“I mean, if something like this happens, normally Red Bull is pretty good in managing it a little bit with a gliding path or something, but this came completely out of the blue, to me. Obviously, maybe not at Red Bull, but I think nothing was out there that it will happen. You know, things change and things move on.”

The timing of Horner’s exit has raised eyebrows within the F1 community, including Steiner, who branded it “very off.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Andreas Beil

“It’s very off because you’ve got only a few races before the summer break, and normally you do it in the summer break,” the former Haas team chief explained. “People shut down. This is done a few days after a race. So it is off as you say, the timing of it and I guess they had some disagreement about something, whatever it is.

“We will find out, we just have to wait a little. But, it’s very off how it happened.”

The talks between Verstappen and Mercedes have only fueled speculation that the Dutchman’s camp could have been involved with the decision to let Horner go. Addressing this, Steiner argued that it would be odd for an F1 driver to state that someone has to leave the company for them to continue.

“It could be that Max put that as one of the things he wanted, you know, it’s a weird thing for a driver to say ‘somebody has to go so that I stay.’ It is never set as clear as this because then you really fire at somebody, and as the world best F1 driver, you shouldn’t have to be doing that.

“But maybe they jumped to the conclusion and said if we want to keep Max something needs to change and we let Christian go. Because obviously, as you said, Jos [Verstappen] and Christian – obviously they didn’t see eye to eye on quite a few things, I mean it was publicly known and publicly played out.

“So that’s never good for either – for the team, nor for the driver. Max always kept out of that, very smartly. So maybe the management at Red Bull said if we want to make Max happy to keep him, we have to do something, and obviously, do you want the best driver in the world? Yes, he comes at a price.”

He added, “I mean, why they do it now, I don’t know. But I think why they didn’t do it last year, it was more like we tried to fix this, and Christian was a big part of the team, and he had a lot of success. So, you need to believe in him as well because he did a good job.”