Christian Horner tastes F1 again, waiting for Alpine: guest of Ben Sulayem at the FIA ​​headquarters

Christian Horner warms up his engines for his return to F1 It is a completely peculiar holiday that the former Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, has taken from Formula 1. Since the day after his farewell to the Milton Keynes team, which arrived suddenly at the behest of the top management of the Anglo-Austrian team after last season’s Silverstone GP, rumors about a possible return to the paddock of the 52-year-old have in fact followed on a regular basis: at first talked about Alpine, then about Aston Martin, Williams, about a hypothetical 12th team in the circus, about a move to MotoGP and even about a sensational change with Frederic Vasseur at the helm of Ferrari. And since some loves don’t end, they make immense turns and then return, the latest rumors return to the starting point, with the confirmations of a possible future in Alpine alongside his friend Flavio Briatore. The Alpine track, via Otro Capital Christian Horner has in fact never hidden his intention of wanting to return to Formula 1. However, not as an employee tout court – and, that is, in the role he had in Red Bull until his dismissal last summer – but with a key and central role in the project, purchasing shares (albeit a minority) of his next team. And it is here that the Alpine hypothesis comes back into vogue, given the desire – officially communicated – of the Otro Capital fund to sell 24% of the shares of the Anglo-French team, purchased for a sum of around 200 million euros at the end of the summer of 2023. Horner, who has long been at the head of a consortium of entrepreneurs close to him, could therefore enter the team’s shareholding structure and, then, also aim for an operational role considering that Alpine is without a team principal (Flavio Briatore himself takes care of it on an interim basis) after the sudden farewell of Oliver Oakes. Guest by Mohammed Ben Sulayem While waiting to finalize the agreement with Otro Capital and close a negotiation which Briatore confirmed is still ongoing – although the American fund is also talking to other interlocutors, which will then in any case have to be accepted by the majority shareholder, the Renault group – in the meantime Horner continues his work as a lobbyist. In fact, the former Red Bull boss went to the FIA ​​in recent days to visit president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. This was reported on social media by the number 1 of Place de la Concorde himself, who published a photo in his office together with the smiling English manager: “It’s fantastic to welcome Christian Horner to the FIA ​​headquarters in Paris. It was wonderful to see you again today, my friend”. A courtesy and business visit, with the complex hypothesis of the creation of a 12th team which remains among the objectives of Ben Sulayem, already one of the main supporters of Cadillac’s entry.