Horner remembers signing as team boss: "Everyone was absolutely amazed"

Horner was still a kid

Four championships in both drivers and constructors, 66 wins, 188 podiums, 64 pole positions and 69 fastest laps. The statistics speak for themselves and Red Bull Racing is one of the most successful Formula 1 teams over the last fifteen years. The team currently leads both championships.

So the 47-year-old team boss has come a long way, but when he was appointed team boss not everyone was happy about it. "I was 31 when I first walked through the door, I was still a kid," Horner tells the High Performance Podcast."I had won the championship three years in a row in the stepping stone class towards Formula 1, Formula 3000 it was called then, so there was an element of success."

Crew went home in protest

When Horner was presented to the former Jaguar staff as the new team boss, some eyebrows went up. "When I first walked in here, everyone was absolutely amazed that they had put such a young boy in charge. The whole factory was called and told that the old team boss had been sacked that very morning. Then they said, 'Tada this is Christian Horner, he's the new team boss'. I then saw a shockwave in the sea of faces. They probably thought: 'what child have they brought in now'", Horner recalls.

The rest of the day didn't go much better for the brand new team boss. "I went to my office, where my secretary was in tears because her previous boss had just been sacked. His Christmas cards were still on the desk and his coffee cup was half empty. That's when I really thought, "Okay, is this it? I also had a fairly dissatisfied crew at the time who went home at five o'clock, I think in protest", he adds, laughing.