Christian Horner should be in steamy Singapore, preparing for another grand prix victory, but here he is, at home on an autumnal morning in genteel Highgate as his wife, Geri Halliwell-Horner, welcomes me with a cheerful hug. Horner smiles as the former Spice Girl produces an impressive imitation of my South African accent which echoes her old headteacher at Watford Girls. After the most controversial man in the recent history of Formula One says hello, Halliwell-Horner and I discuss the fact that my two daughters also went to her school and that one of their history textbooks had her name printed on the inside page – while the ex-Ginger Spice talks about gritty old Watford, grammar school education and Nelson Mandela.
I joke that it feels like I’m interviewing Halliwell-Horner instead of Horner. Everyone laughs but I will soon ask Horner about the impact on his marriage in 2024 when an investigation was carried out into allegations he had sent “hundreds” of inappropriate texts and photographs to a female employee when Red Bull’s team principal. The woman was apparently “upset, angry, scared, intimidated and lonely” while the tabloids speculated that Halliwell-Horner was “furious”.
Horner was exonerated by two independent investigations but other hurtful circumstances then surrounded his sudden departure from Red Bull in July 2025. The team has struggled since then but, nine days ago, at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Max Verstappen won Red Bull’s first race with an engine built entirely by the team. Verstappen then won again in Singapore this past Sunday.
That feat of engineering had been conceived and instigated by Horner near the end of his remarkable 20 years at Red Bull. When Halliwell-Horner disappears after a final hug, Horner is amiable yet careful. However, the 52-year-old admits his distress after he was forced out: “It felt particularly brutal and sad to finish in that manner.
But I now have a reasonable relationship with Oliver Mintzlaff [the CEO of corporate projects at Red Bull]. He rang the other day and thanked me for all I’d done for the engine.” His dismissal, Horner reiterates, “was painful. I didn’t really process it till a month later because, in the immediate aftermath, I focused on supporting my daughter [Olivia] through a hideous period.” Horner and his former partner, Beverley Allen, became parents to Olivia in 2013.
After they separated, he and Allen remained on good terms and so grief, following her death from eye cancer, framed his demise at Red Bull. As he recalls that difficult period, he pays fleeting tribute to his arch-rival, Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes, who has addressed his battle with depression. I hadn’t experienced those issues but I had an appreciation during this period of how people could [suffer].
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