F1 News
Can Horner and Wolff be friends? 'I think it's dishonest'
- Ludo van Denderen
Both Christian Horner and Toto Wolff have often provided some much-needed talking points. As team bosses of Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, they have frequently shown that they are not on the same page, although there is mutual respect. In a documentary soon to be shown on Sky Sports UK, they both discuss their relationship.
Horner and Wolff are among the team bosses who have won the most awards in Formula 1. Since 2010, either Red Bull or Mercedes drivers have always taken the world title, with either Horner or Wolff at the helm as the team's leader. Especially in the wonderful and controversial '21 season, the intense battle between the Brit and the Austrian regularly came into focus. Friends? No, they are not.
Respect for Wolff
"I have a huge amount of respect for everything that he has done and achieved," Horner says in the documentary, already reported by the Sky Sports website. "But we're competitors. I've never been a believer that you can be the best mate with your competitor. I think it's dishonest. I want everybody in my team to see that whoever we're racing against is the competition, that's who we're there to compete with and that we're united as a team."
In 2021, the relationship between the team bosses came to a boiling point. Horner reflects: "Any sport is a mind game, but when you see a camp part losing it and smashing a set of headphones up, you think, 'OK, you're feeling the pressure'. And if he is feeling the pressure, then everybody else around him is feeling the pressure, because pressure permeates from the top. I would never smash a set of headphones up. Internally I would have smashed mentally those headphones just as hard as him, but I just wouldn't have done it physically. I just think everybody is different."
'Horner is different type'
Wolff was also asked what he thought of Horner. His answer immediately made it clear that Horner should not count on ever being asked to join Mercedes: "He's a good team manager. But it's very different personality and very different values to what we have here in the organisation. But he's still successful," Wolff said.