Horner easily expelled Steiner | M4 Sport

Günther Steiner, who has become very popular in recent years, mainly thanks to the Netflix series, tested his management skills in the top category even before the Haas era: after working in the world of rallying for many years, he was appointed Managing Director of the Jaguar F1 Team in 2001.

He worked with the team until the end of 2003, then, with a strange twist in his story, returned in 2005 – however, at that time the team was no longer called Jaguars, but Red Bull. Bowles appointed him head of the technical department, but he left the position after a year.

After that, he got a job in the NASCAR program of the Red Bull corporation, and since the middle of 2010 he has been one of the pilots of the Haas F1 project. Christian Horner, who has been in charge of the F1 bull team since the start, was recently asked about his early “Red Bull adventure”, and honestly admitted that it wasn’t hard to say goodbye to Steiner.

One of the main reasons for this was that the bulls had already chosen the most famous F1 design engineer of our time to head up the technical department. “Günther was and remains a real character, but it was clear that he was not a technical leader.” Horner pointed out.

“I realized that the team primarily needs technical direction and leadership. That’s why I tried to organize a meeting with Adrian so early on– points to Newey, who was working for McLaren at the time, but at the end of 2005 before the Red Bull offer, where he can celebrate four championship titles in a row between 2010 and 2014, and then reach the top again in 2021 and 2022.

“It’s all about putting the right people in the right positions and creating a good atmosphere for them. If you care about people and make them feel comfortable in the environment they are in, they will be loyal to you. In the Arden, people didn’t need to know the risks we were taking. They had to use their own experience and trust their decisionsFollow the routine specialist.

In his testimony to me, Horner also touched on how he came to be part of the Red Bull project, at a time when, as F2 team captain Adren, he was increasingly toying with the idea of ​​playing a role in class royalty.

“I was looking for a way to get Areden into F1. Bernie (Ecclestone, F1 director) led me towards Jordan. Then Helmut (Marco, Red Bull consultant) invited me to Salzburg to meet (Dietrich) Mateschitz (Red Bull owner) in the summer of 2004. Jordan’s deal didn’t work out, and Red Bull bought Jaguar. Dietrich called me at the end of 2004 and asked me to be the manager of the Red Bull teamHe remembers.

Christian Horner (Photo: Servus TV)