Helmut Marko lights the fuse: explosive claims reignite Red Bull’s civil war
Red Bull’s long-running power saga just found a new chapter. Days after his own exit from the team was confirmed, Helmut Marko has launched a blistering attack on former team boss Christian Horner, accusing him of lying, scheming, and playing “dirty games” during the most turbulent years in the team’s history.
Speaking to Dutch outlet De Limburger, Marko painted a picture of a split organisation in the wake of Dietrich Mateschitz’s death in 2022, alleging Horner courted the support of Red Bull majority shareholder Chalerm Yoovidhya to consolidate control in Milton Keynes.
“That’s how it’s always been described in the media, but it wasn’t personal,” Marko said of the widely reported power struggle. “Together with Didi, I founded Red Bull Racing in 2005. We appointed Horner as team principal, and I was there as supervisor. In principle, the power always lay in Austria; we made the decisions.”
Marko claims the dynamic shifted in 2022. He recalls a party before the Austrian Grand Prix where Horner allegedly remarked of Mateschitz’s health: “He won’t make it to the end of the year.” From that moment, Marko argues, Horner “started cosying up” to Yoovidhya — and after Mateschitz passed away, “did everything he could to take over with Yoovidhya’s support.” Marko says he did all he could “on behalf of Austria” to stop it.
The interview follows a wild mid-season storyline that saw Horner sacked in the aftermath of the 2025 British Grand Prix, abruptly ending his two-decade run as Red Bull team principal. Horner’s final years were dogged by controversy: he was twice cleared by Red Bull of wrongdoing after allegations from a staff member, and the team was routinely rocked by whispers of infighting and uneasy relations with Jos Verstappen, father of Max.
Marko’s own departure, announced this week by Red Bull GmbH after more than 20 years in his senior advisor role, appeared to close the book on the old guard. Not so, in his telling.
“Those last few years with Horner were not pleasant. There were dirty games being played,” Marko said. He even suggested some of the stormiest headlines were manufactured. Citing the 2023 Monza furore — when he apologised after remarks about Sergio Perez’s form and heritage sparked outrage — Marko now alleges: “That was fabricated, perhaps by them.”
He added another charge: that a 2024 rumour about Red Bull Powertrains being behind schedule with Ford — and a supposed risk to the partnership — was wrongly attributed to him and used as a pretext to try to suspend him. “I never said that, but Horner wanted to use it to suspend me. Because Max stepped in at Jeddah, it didn’t happen.”
Talk of Marko’s potential suspension did swirl around the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in 2024, before the situation cooled. Marko’s version of events places Verstappen firmly in his corner at a crucial moment — a familiar thread in the team’s internal politics over the past two seasons.
Perhaps most damning for Horner is Marko’s claim that Yoovidhya eventually shifted away from the former team boss. “We were increasingly able to prove that Horner was lying about all sorts of things. Once Chalerm realised this too, he had a change of heart.” That version would help explain the sudden loss of top-level backing that preceded Horner’s exit in mid-2025.
Marko also disputes Red Bull GmbH’s framing of his own departure as his decision, despite CEO Oliver Mintzlaff saying he “deeply regretted” it. He labelled the parent company’s statement “full of nonsense” and said he had to call Max Verstappen quickly to inform him he was out — a suggestion that the timing and message weren’t his to control.
It’s worth stating the obvious: these are Marko’s allegations, delivered with the sting of a man who believes his camp won the last round but lost the war. Horner, for his part, has long denied any wrongdoing and survived multiple internal probes before his Silverstone sacking. Red Bull, meanwhile, has tried to project stability, but that’s a hard sell when two of the organisation’s most powerful figures of the last 20 years have departed under clouds and are now trading accusations through the press.
The broader stakes are clear. Red Bull Racing — constructed in the Mateschitz era with a delicate balance between Milton Keynes and Salzburg — now has to define its identity without Mateschitz, without Horner, and without Marko. Max Verstappen remains the anchor on the driving side, but the political centre of gravity isn’t what it was.
If Marko’s interview is any guide, the story behind the story at Red Bull still has a few laps to run. The headlines will say he accused Horner of lying. The subtext is sharper: control of Red Bull Racing has been contested since 2022, and the fallout is still hitting the paddock in 2025. The only certainty is that everyone in Formula 1 is watching what comes next.
