Less pressure, more patience: how Red Bull has changed without Horner and Marko

The end of an era Last July 9th, three days after the British GP, Christian Horner’s era in Red Bull officially ended. After 20 years spent in the role of team principal, the British manager was shown the door and a few months later, at the end of the 2025 World Championship, the same fate befell the team’s historic consultant, Helmut Marko. Within half the year the two souls – often conflicting with each other, but still central – of the Red Bull F1 project were ousted. Now control of the team is in the hands of Laurent Mekies. The Frenchman, formerly of Racing Bulls, Ferrari and FIA, has a very different leadership style compared to his predecessors. This was highlighted on Sky UK by former Indian driver Karun Chandhok, a popular commentator on British TV. Chandhok underlined how the departure of Horner and Marko almost simultaneously changed the level of pressure within the Milton Keynes team, in particular lightening the load of tension that Isack Hadjar now has to bear compared to those who in recent years were Max Verstappen’s teammates. New management “It’s a very different team now that Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have left,” Chandhok noted, “this is the first full year of the Mekies era at Red Bull and I think maybe it’s a less stressful environment now.” The whirlwind of drivers in recent years, with Perez, Lawson and Tsunoda alternating on the team’s second single-seater, now seems to be over. “Putting all that pressure on Liam Lawson, giving him two races to prove his worth behind the wheel, didn’t work – underlined Chandhok – [una cosa del genere] it will never work. So I hope, for Isaac’s sake, that this situation continues. They don’t need him to beat Max. They need him to be a tenth or two behind Max and just make sure that, on a day when Max has a problem, or something happens, he’s there. As long as it’s right behind him and so far it has been there,” commented the former Indian driver.