Managing pressure is an integral part of Formula 1. At the extreme end of sports, team managers are the ones who carry the responsibility and burden, and this carries great weight. Christian Horner is no stranger to dealing with this situation throughout his career, which has been marked by a focused and motivating ambition that has led to extraordinary achievements.
But Red Bull team boss Horner faces scrutiny perhaps unprecedented in his 20 years in F1; The team’s parent company is investigating allegations of improper control behavior against it.
He has learned a lot about his role at work. Horner, who took over as head of Red Bull in 2005 during the team’s first season in Formula 1, was the youngest team boss at the time at the age of 31. He remains with the team almost two decades later and is now the team’s longest-serving manager. Cage. He emphasized that the team environment and indeed its management is unique.
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“We’re different at Red Bull. You won’t see anyone in a suit and tie here, it’s more jeans and T-shirts,” he said. “We play our music loud, we don’t conform, we’re not accountable to an engine manufacturer. We call it as we see it and give it an idea. We are not afraid to own it.
When he took over the team from Jaguar, its staff was 450 people. Today, the company, which has won seven drivers’ championships and six constructors’ championships, employs 1,500 people across Red Bull Racing, Red Bull Powertrains and Red Bull Advanced Technologies, all three of which have Horner as CEO.
The days of running a team in a real garage with a handful of mechanics are long gone. The team manager actually heads up a small and rather unique industry. The team should be a design group, a research group, a production enterprise, a promotion machine, a sports enterprise and today a corporate enterprise. In terms of its scale and complexity, the F1 team is unlike any other sporting organisation.
The demands are relentless and unforgiving; perhaps more so than other structures of similar size, because success is measured beyond the bottom line, in competition that is both fierce and public. Horner, like all team principals, is keenly aware that he is the front-facing representative of the team, second only to the two drivers in terms of attention and reputation.
The role often attracts singular personalities, and these are rarely shrinking violets. A certain level of assertiveness is also evident, determination and often a streak of ruthlessness. Horner demonstrated these qualities time and time again, especially when he chose to abandon his driving career when he was only 25 years old. He acted quickly and decisively, thinking honestly and realizing that he was not in the top echelon. Choosing to devote his energies to developing the Arden racing team he founded was an early example of his forward-thinking pragmatism.
It became clear that Arden had real talent in this department, as he quickly proved successful and began recruiting candidates for the Red Bull job. It was a huge task when he started, and he turned around with stunning speed. He captured the team’s first world championship five years after taking over, winning four consecutive drivers’ and teams’ doubles between 2010 and 2013.
When assessing the role, Horner always made it clear that the most important role a team manager plays is people management, with the leader setting the pace, direction and objectives.
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“This is a people thing,” he said. “It’s about understanding people and working with people, getting the right people around you, giving them the right direction and trying to create the right environment for them.”
This requires both considerable management skill and the scale of the organization clearly requires an art of delegation as well as people skills.
It is also unusual for it to require a performance element and Horner has not shied away from F1’s politics when his rivals are under pressure. Playing this game is part of the sport that heightens the tension, and it has been remarkable how difficult it has become in the 2021 season, especially when Horner’s driver Max Verstappen has been going toe-to-toe with Lewis Hamilton all season long.
Horner said the pressure in F1 was inevitable and difficult to argue with, a complex and intricate aspect of the role that placed demands like no other.