Christian Horner 'jealous of Toto Wolff' as Mercedes spark Max Verstappen row
Christian Horner and Toto Wolff share one of the most iconic rivalries in F1 as the team principals of Red Bull and Mercedes.
Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft thinks that Christian Horner is jealous of the ‘control’ and ‘power’ that Toto Wolff has thanks to his status as part-owner of the Mercedes team. The pair have recently been caught in a fresh row following recent comments about the future of Max Verstappen.
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Horner and Wolff’s iconic rivalry dates back many years with Netflix’s hit docuseries Drive to Survive placing the pair’s competitive jabs onto a much bigger platform. The two team principals are now celebrities in their own rights, but they remain fierce competitors at the racetrack.
Recently, the pair have clashed over Wolff’s continued pursuit of Verstappen, who he sees as the ideal replacement for Lewis Hamilton in 2025. Since the Dutchman made some of his concerns about the atmosphere of the team public earlier this season, the Mercedes boss has been relentless in his public pursuit of the three-time world champion.
Assessing the recent war of words over Verstappen on the Sky F1 podcast, Croft said: “I think Christian and Toto will carry on the war of words for the entirety of their time in Formula One. It will just carry on. They’ve got a history, they’ve got a present and I think they’ve got a future when it comes to not agreeing with certain things.
“Toto is doing everything that you would expect one of your rivals to do and if your driver is making it public that he might leave, he’s going to put his arm around him, he’s going to tell him that he’s the most important person on the planet and ‘come over to us, the grass is much greener at Brackley than it is at Milton Keynes.’”
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However, Croft believes that jealousy comes into play with Horner and Wolff’s rivalry. While the latter owns one-third of the Mercedes F1 operation, the Red Bull team principal has been forced to wrestle for power with advisor Helmut Marko and the Austrian branch of the energy drink company.
“The one thing that I think is always going to wind Christian up a little bit as well is that for all the success at Red Bull, for all the titles, the trophies, the race wins that they’re enjoying at the moment, Toto Wolff is a co-owner of a Formula One team and Christian Horner isn’t,” Croft continued.
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“And I don’t think that goes down very well with Christian. I think if you said to him, ‘Would you like to be a co-owner of that Red Bull team?’ Of course, he would. He wants control. He wants power and Toto’s got that because he is a one-third owner of Mercedes.
“And Christian Horner, he might be a CEO and he might be a team principal, but he’s a paid employee of the Red Bull Formula One team, so he hasn’t got that autonomy to make decisions in the way that Toto has and I think a lot of the animosity on Christian’s side maybe stems from that. But I think Toto also knows how to wind Christian up as well.”
