Christian Horner Reveals Why Guenther Steiner Never Earned Red Bull’s Trust

Guenther Steiner is one of the most popular and entertaining figures in F1 today. Steiner’s rise to fame skyrocketed when Netflix’s Drive to Survive hit the screens in 2019 and since then, he has become one of the show’s biggest stars. However, when it comes to leading the technical aspect of teams in F1, Christian Horner isn’t a huge fan of his.

Horner is one of the most successful team principals in F1 history and has guided Red Bull to five constructors’ championship wins. Steiner meanwhile, has spent the last nine years managing to keep Haas F1 team afloat. What a lot of people don’t know is that, before joining the Kannapolis-based outfit in 2014, Steiner was the technical operations director at Red Bull.

#OTD 15 years ago – Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and technical director Guenther Steiner at the team’s first test session in Barcelona – long before Steiner became Horner’s opposite number at Haas.#F1 pic.twitter.com/vYF69PggVB

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Steiner and Horner being on the same today seems like an unfathomable thought because of their contrasting personalities, and Horner agrees. The latter considers Red Bull to be a part of his life, and when asked about Steiner’s time at Red Bull, he had some criticism aimed toward the Italian.

When Christian Horner and Guenther Steiner worked together at Red Bull

Steiner was a part of the Red Bull outfit between 2005 and 2008 and was mainly working in the technical department. This wasn’t a golden era for Red Bull, as the car was not performing particularly well. Horner and Steiner’s partnership did take them forward, but it wasn’t quite where they wanted to be.

According to Horner, Steiner was always an interesting character but he lacked a certain leadership trait which limited his chances of becoming successful at Red Bull. What the Austrian team lacked back then was a sharp technical mind, who was also a good leader, and Steiner wasn’t the right person for that.

🗣️ | Christian Horner says that it was immediately “obvious” that Steiner was not the right fit for Technical Leadership and made the decision quickly:

Horner was appointed TP in 2005, and easied Steiner out in 2006.

Afterwards he made it a point to bump into Adrian Newey. pic.twitter.com/YzXkk3oZMW

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Steiner was the technical director, but Horner was unable to see a future with him at the helm.

“Guenther was and is a character but it was obvious he was not a technical leader,” said Horner. “I identified what the team really needed was technical leadership and direction.”

Horner approached Adrian Newey to lead Red Bull’s charge

Adrian Newey is one of the smartest minds to ever work in F1 and the amount of work he put in Red Bull’s car development made the Milton-Keynes-based outfit the team it is today. Newey made Red Bull a force to reckon with, and it all comes down to Horner sourcing him as the man to lead Red Bull’s technical charge.

“From a very early stage I made a point of bumping into Adrian,” Horner added.