The Red Bull RB20 created quite a stir when it broke cover last week – but not as much as the investigation surrounding the team’s boss
ALEX KALINAUCKAS
He looked rather small; Christian Horner, surrounded by reporters in a horseshoe of chairs and standing stragglers, a few feet from where the Red Bull RB20 had just been revealed. Horner’s stature hadn’t changed, of course, but there was something missing. The bravado was punctured; the immaculate image diminished. Perhaps irrevocably so.
To a certain extent this picture was inevitable. It was, after all, taking place within a live launch where Red Bull wasn’t claiming an old car or an F1 show model was the real thing. Horner was exactly where he was supposed to be. Soon he was fielding questions on whether the RB20 and what Sergio Perez described as its “brave” design evolution were trolling Mercedes, given where such developments had first been seen so unsuccessfully. The basic floor on the launch car suggests Red Bull is, to a certain extent, playing with observers – and it’s not alone in doing so.
But that topic had followed a briefing from Red Bull’s communications chief that questions about the investigation into Horner’s behaviour towards a female employee couldn’t probe too far, that it remained a live legal situation and questions would be shut down if they delved too deeply. Horner was, however, free to answer questions on the mood within the Red Bull squad in light of the allegations. “Inevitably,” began the muted reply, “there has been a distraction…”
The focus had been elsewhere for days. When Red Bull emailed launch attendees the day before, chiefly to explain where the event would later be streamed to the public, major outlets including the BBC and The Guardianran stories on it being Horner’s first public appearance since the news of the investigation first broke in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, to which Horner said, “I completely deny these claims”. This is the stance he has maintained.
It was easy, therefore, to ponder how the situation would be addressed – what was Red Bull’s message going to be? It was simply too important not to come up. Would an announcement be made to those gathered once they were first in the team’s MK7 conference and event hall, surrounded by 14 of its previous F1 designs? Would a soft stage question be levelled at Horner once the event got going? The press questions request turned out to be the first mention.
Before this, the launch had proceeded as had been p
