Horner also has some for Ferrari and Mercedes: “Red Bull best engine? Some have been making them for 75 years”

Christian Horner’s claims Christian Horner reappeared on Sunday, on the starting grid of the Silverstone GP, not failing to underline with a certain firmness his merits in Red Bull’s comeback last season, but also distancing himself a bit from the current poor state of form (“it takes 9 or 12 months to make an impact on a team”, he said). However, there is one aspect of the RB22 for which he intends to take ownership: the Red Bull-Ford engine, surprisingly – even for Laurent Mekies himself – considered the best in the GP paddock after the first five races of the season, at least according to the FIA ​​findings regarding the ADUO concession system. Click here to add Formula Passion as your favorite source on Google Discover: you will find our contents more easily The birth of Red Bull Powertrains And it is certainly true that Red Bull’s choice to become a manufacturer of power units itself starts way back, when Christian Horner was still very firmly at the helm of the Milton Keynes team. The decision to build its own structure next to the headquarters where the chassis is assembled, and to start a super aggressive purchasing campaign towards engineers from Mercedes and Honda just after the Japanese company’s decision to exit Formula 1 (only to then turn around a few months later), is in fact a decision mainly attributable to the English manager, now 52 years old. Indeed, at the time, the decision to build an engine at home rather than give in to Porsche’s offer to buy a majority share in the team was one of the first areas of conflict with Helmut Marko. The dig at Wolff and Ferrari It is inevitable, therefore, that the performance of the first engine that Red Bull built on its own, albeit with initially only commercial and then also technical help from Ford, is a source of pride for Horner: “As uncomfortable as it is to be judged as the best combustion engine in Formula 1, I am sure it is an extraordinary result,” he said in an interview with journalists from the Times of London. Then also adding what appears to be a dig at some direct rivals, including Mercedes’ historic rival, Toto Wolff, or Ferrari itself: “There are many manufacturers who haven’t managed to have the best engine, yet they’ve been doing it for 75 years.” “That relationship with Ford – he adds – the fuel that ExxonMobil contributed, but also the headquarters that we built for the power unit division, which five years ago was a bubble wrap factory! There was only one person who had a modicum of experience having previously worked at Cosworth, and that was all that Red Bull had.” “In 55 weeks we built a factory, in 14 months we had an engine up and running, 650 people were employed in that company and over 200 of them came from Mercedes-Benz or Mercedes HPP,” concluded Christian Horner in reference to High Performance Powertrains, the Brixworth-based power unit factory.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-09 06:00:00