Six weeks after being ushered out of Red Bull, Christian Horner has reappeared a long way from Milton Keynes — cruising the Adriatic with family, a Sunseeker and a low profile.
The former Red Bull CEO and team principal was last seen publicly at the British Grand Prix. Two days later, Red Bull GmbH made its move: Horner out, Laurent Mekies in as both CEO and team boss. Horner gave an emotional farewell to staff at Milton Keynes and disappeared from the paddock conversation, save for a few social media breadcrumbs — an Oasis comeback gig at Wembley, some wistful sunset shots from the bow of a boat.
This week, the dots joined. Croatian outlet 24Sata published images of Geri Horner aboard the £10.5m Sunseeker Majic, with the family said to be near the Pelješac peninsula, north of Dubrovnik. The photos also show Horner on board, relaxing with friends and family as the post-Red Bull dust settles.
Back in the UK, the paperwork has caught up with the reality. Companies House filings confirm Horner’s termination as a director across several Red Bull entities. Notably, the reshuffle doesn’t put Mekies on the board of the F1 team; instead, Red Bull GmbH’s head of HR, Stefan Salzer, is now listed alongside Helmut Marko as a director of Red Bull Racing. Salzer and Alistair Rew oversee Red Bull Technology, while Marko and Rew are named on Red Bull Powertrains, Red Bull Advanced Technologies, and Red Bull Advanced Services.
One unresolved piece: whether Horner remains an employee of Red Bull in a non-operational capacity. If he does, his salary could still bite into the cost cap as one of the group’s top earners — not a trivial footnote for a team planning its 2025 budget. Red Bull has yet to clarify his status.
What comes next for Horner is just as murky. Even in a swift split, a period of gardening leave — six months, at minimum — looks inevitable. A Ferrari switch isn’t happening, with Frederic Vasseur renewed at Maranello. Talk of a leap to the prospective Cadillac entry has also been played down by those close to that project.
For now, Horner’s future plays out offstage. Red Bull’s is already moving: Mekies steps into day-to-day command, Salzer and Marko mind the corporate architecture, and the organisation reshapes around a post-Horner reality. The man who helped build one of the most formidable operations in modern F1 is watching it sail on without him, at least for the moment — quite literally, from the deck of a yacht in the Adriatic.
