Many F1 fans would probably know Red Bull team principal and CEO, Christian Horner, owing to his bitter rivalry with his Mercedes counterpart, Toto Wolff. However, the 51-year-old was once ready to put up a handsome $5,000 on the table to get a guided tour through the Silver Arrows’ Brackley-based factory.
Back in 2022, the annual Autosport Awards put up a bid for a tour of the Mercedes F1 factory. Horner cheekily put up the highest bid of about £4,000 ($5,000 approx.) and won the tour!
What makes this even more interesting is that the Silver Arrows had just lost out on the drivers’ title to the Bulls in 2021 — a bitter result for the team in controversial circumstances that they would not have recovered from soon.
In 2022, Mercedes auctioned a factory tour at the #AutosportAwards, and the highest bidder was none other than Christian Horner (£4k).
— The Red Bull team boss joked that he planned to bring “about 20” people along for the visit
#redbullracing #mercedesamgf1
VIA: [autosport]
— This Is Formula 1 (@thisisformula1.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Horner did not get the chance to claim his prize as one of the conditions of the auction was that no other rival F1 employee could actually make it to the tour. But that didn’t stop the Briton from taking a sly jab at his rivals.
Whilst discussing the missed opportunity for the tour, he joked that he would have taken the likes of Pierre Wache and Adrian Newey (the car design honchos of Red Bull) along with him.
When asked what his guest list would have looked like if he had been allowed to take the tour, he said, “Adrian [Newey, Chief Technical Officer], myself, Pierre Waché [Technical Director], and probably Paul Field, our Director of Production,” as per RacingNews365.
Horner went on to recall the time he was offered a tour around McLaren’s factory in Woking but was restricted from visiting certain areas of the McLaren Technology Center (MTC). This just goes on to show how competitive and secretive the F1 paddock is, being the pinnacle of single-seater, open-wheel motorsport.
