Christian Horner’s route back into Formula 1 keeps throwing up new branches — and the most interesting one right now runs through China.
Over the Monaco weekend, Horner quietly spent time on the French Riviera in Cannes with Stella Li, BYD’s vice-president, as the electric-vehicle giant weighs up what an F1 project could look like. Multiple meetings took place across two days, and while nobody involved is putting their name to any grand plan yet, the optics were hard to miss: Li and Horner together at BYD’s ‘Cannes Night’ event, the former Red Bull boss visible in the mix as BYD continues to nudge closer to the paddock.
Li has already confirmed BYD has been in discussion with Formula One Group CEO Stefano Domenicali — including talks in Shanghai last month — and she’s been unusually open for a senior figure from a company not yet in the championship.
“We are always in close contact,” Li said previously. “I like Formula 1 because it’s about passion and culture, and people dream of being in Formula 1.”
The pitch from BYD’s side is straightforward: F1 is the global shop window, a place to “put our technology to the test”, and an arena that still carries the kind of cultural cachet that the car industry can’t manufacture with marketing spend alone. For a company pushing vertical integration across batteries and EV tech — and doing it at industrial scale — the sport’s 2026 landscape is, at the very least, worth a hard look.
The key question is what “a hard look” actually means in practice.
There’s been noise this week around BYD joining the scrum for the 24 per cent Alpine stake currently held by Otro Capital, with several bidders circling and Renault’s leadership entertaining proposals. Horner has been linked to that process too, as has Mercedes — a thread made more intriguing by Alpine’s existing power-unit supply relationship with the German manufacturer.
But the more telling detail is what’s being suggested behind the scenes: BYD isn’t primarily focused on buying a minority slice of someone else’s organisation. It’s exploring the bigger, messier, potentially more rewarding move — building a new F1 team and using any future opening for a 12th entry.
That’s where Horner becomes more than a famous face at a glitzy event.
He’s been free to re-enter F1 in any capacity since May 8, after a period of gardening leave following his 2025 exit from Red Bull. Since then, he’s held meetings with both Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, and the idea of what a credible 12th-team project might look like has repeatedly come up in those conversations. Horner’s record ensures he’s taken seriously the moment he walks into a room — not just as an operator, but as someone who can structure a team, attract sponsors, and, crucially, convince decision-makers that an expansion bid would add value rather than dilute it.
BYD, for its part, clearly likes being seen in racing environments while it considers its next move. Horner also appeared in Monaco at the Formula E race, attending as a guest of Liberty Global, the majority shareholder in the electric series. It doesn’t automatically connect the dots, but it does underline what’s happening here: BYD is positioning itself around top-level motorsport, and Horner is spending time with the kind of corporate leadership that can write the cheques for the sort of project he’s said to want next.
Because Horner isn’t simply looking for another team principal job. The brief is bigger: ownership or shareholding, a role that scratches both the competitive itch and the business ambition. That’s why he’s been linked with Aston Martin, where Lawrence Stroll has reportedly explored the idea of pairing Horner with Adrian Newey in a supercharged leadership structure. It’s also why the Alpine stake has been so attractive: it’s an immediate way into a team with existing infrastructure and a works-brand presence, without waiting for the sport to open the door to an eleventh or twelfth entry.
Yet that Alpine process is also starting to resemble a political stress test for F1’s governance.
Zak Brown has been particularly vocal about the implications of “common ownership” structures and strategic stakes between competitors — concerns sharpened by the prospect of a Mercedes stake in Alpine, and in the broader context of Red Bull’s existing two-team model. Brown has written to Ben Sulayem urging the FIA to engage in talks about legislation in this area, pushing for a ban on further common ownership structures and even calling for existing ones to be dissolved.
If that direction gathers momentum, it would complicate a Mercedes-Alpine deal significantly. And if Mercedes becomes a more difficult route for Renault politically, Horner’s appeal as a sporting partner only grows — not least because Renault is understood to be looking for someone more involved than a passive financial investor.
But the BYD angle may yet prove the more disruptive story, because it touches the most sensitive topic of all: whether F1 actually wants another team on the grid.
Ben Sulayem has been consistent in his public stance that a Chinese bid would make commercial sense if — and it’s a big if — it’s the “right team”. He’s also suggested FOM would see the value given the size of the market and the business upside. Domenicali, meanwhile, has sounded far more cautious, pointing to logistical limits and the need to protect the value teams have built as franchise-like assets.
Those two positions aren’t necessarily incompatible. They just raise the bar for newcomers to a height we haven’t really seen before. A BYD-Horner combination, at least on paper, looks like an attempt to clear that bar: deep resources, an appetite for global exposure, and a proven F1 builder at the centre of it.
None of this means BYD is definitely coming, or that Horner has picked his next garage. But the fact the meetings are happening — and happening in plain sight — tells you the idea is moving beyond idle curiosity. The paddock has a way of sniffing out who’s serious long before press releases do. And right now, BYD is behaving like a company that’s measuring the sport up, not just daydreaming about it.
