Christian Horner believes Red Bull is posing a challenge to Toto Wolff that he has never seen before in F1 — a genuine threat to Mercedes’ dominance.
Team principals Wolff and Horner have become arch-rivals in the football manager’s style, their relationship full of tit-for-tat jibes similar to those between Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger a decade or two ago.
It’s all part of Red Bull going toe-to-toe with the seven-time World Champions now that they have a car, a Honda engine, and a driver in Max Verstappen, all of which are capable of deposing Mercedes and maybe taking the titles away from them.
Despite spending four years with Williams before joining Mercedes, Wolff’s profile has risen along with his team’s success – but Horner believes the current situation has put the 49-year-old Austrian under a different level of strain.
“He came into the sport with Mercedes in 2013 and the structure was already in place,” Horner said.
“Toto’s done a tremendous job operating the team and maintaining their performance. But of course he’s never experienced anything other than winning. So it’s a different type of pressure now. It’s tough.”
Horner understands what it’s like when a winning streak comes to an end, something he hopes Mercedes will experience as well. It happened to Red Bull during their domination with Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013.
“It was frustrating,” admitted the 47-year-old Briton. “It’s very easy to lose motivation but there was an inner determination to get back into a winning position.
“We’ve retained tremendous continuity during that period. You look around the engineering office now and many of the people still here were with us from 2010 to 2013. So we’ve had great continuity but we’ve also brought along another generation of talent, youth and capability.
“I think the biggest single factor was the big engine regulation change for 2014. All engine manufacturers other than Mercedes, with Ross, had underestimated the impact.
“So when we turned up in 2014, we were two years behind Mercedes. It’s taken us pretty much to this year to get to a point where we’ve got a power unit capable of going toe-to-toe with them.”
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