The current Red Bull team boss, Christian Horner has inspired many with his journey to the top of the motorsports world. However, in the process of advancing through the ranks, the youngest team principal of an F1 team has seen many highs and lows, one of which was overseeing the first drug case in motorsport history.
In the year 2002, Christian Horner was managing the Arden International Formula 3000 team. Unfortunately, the team had a history of financial difficulties, which worsened during the 2002 season, making things extremely challenging. The team’s inability to be reliable and its lack of competitiveness ultimately caused them to stumble. In this situation, Horner felt compelled to revitalize the team’s potential.
In light of this, the team made the decision to swap out their driver, Heinz Herald Frentzen, for Tomas Enge, a promising Czech driver who also happens to have financial support. However, Tomas’ introduction to the team resulted in enormous challenges and horrible suffering for the team. In a recent episode of the eff won with DRS podcast, Christian Horner discussed with Dax Shepard how Tomas Enge led his squad to victory yet, in a dramatic twist of circumstances, pushed them into deep swamps.
The 49-year-old said, “I took this driver out of Formula One, a Czech guy and he won the championship that year. He beat a driver, Sébastien Bourdais, that came over here. And then he got excluded for being a foul. A thousand percent over the legal drug limit.” Subsequently, Horner disclosed that Enge had smoked marijuana and concluded by claiming that this was the “First-ever drug case in motorsport history.” Nevertheless, the Briton didn’t stop there and added how Enge’s manager stood up for his client, “His manager said, Well, he must have inhaled it.”
Horner later added that the driver was on medication for a back spasm that he had sustained during a crash in Japan, and he was on pills for years. Shepard, as any other listener, was surprised by the details, considering he won.
How did Tomas Enge’s career progress in the wake of the drug controversy?
Enge’s disappointing season-ending performance in 2002 cost him a seat with Jordan, which meant he began to struggle with sustaining himself as a single-seater driver. Even yet, he made a comeback in 2004 and was frequently spotted yielding a fourth in the standings. A year later, though he started winning races in the AIGL World Cup of Motorsports, and his focus began to shift progressively toward endurance racing.
Enge had great expectations going forward, but his journey was cut short by injuries he suffered at the 2007 St. Petersburg ALMS event. There, he wrecked the top-ranked Ferrari 430GT in GT2, breaking his elbow, fracturing his ankle and ribs, and damaging his lung. However, when he came back in 2009, a few years later, he was found having fun with Aston Martin Racing. Driving the company’s Lola B09/60-Aston, he helped the team win the series twice and the Le Mans Series LMP1 title. He also finished fourth in the Le Mans 24 Hours.
After that, he entered the new GT1 world championship and won the Nurburgring race with an Aston Martin DBR9. Nevertheless, once 2012 arrived, Enge’s horrors from the past returned. Following four races with Reuter Engineering, the Czech driver was disqualified for eighteen months upon testing positive for a prohibited drug.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the end for the man, given that in 2014, he returned to the race with the same squad in the Blancpain Sprint Series, where he finished second a couple of times, indicating his ongoing commitment to the motorsports sector.
