30 Days of BTG: Day 1 – How Christian Horner became Red Bull Team Principal

Tom Clarkson (0:09)

Hello there, Tom Clarkson here. I hope you've had a great Christmas and a very happy new year. You'll be thrilled to know there's just over a month until the first Grand Prix of 2024 in Bahrain, and just 30 days until you can hear the first episode of F1 Beyond The Grid Series 7 There's plenty to whet your F1 appetite in the meantime, with car launches and pre-season testing all to come over the next month. But starting now, we've got a real treat for you as we build up to the new campaign.

Having started this podcast in 2018, our Beyond The Grid archives are full of fascinating insight, gripping stories and plenty of laughter from thrilling conversations with your Formula 1 icons past and present. The winter break is the perfect time to listen through them. But with so many to choose from, where do you start?

Well, I'm gonna help you. Between now and the start of Series 7, I'm going to be handpicking some of our very best clips in 30 days of Beyond The Grid.

Here's how it's gonna work. Every day between now and the 28th of February, you'll get a specially chosen clip from the Beyond The Grid archive. It could be a current Formula 1 star talking about their early days in racing, a world champion reflecting on their crowning moment or one of the sport's many cult heroes sharing their favorite memories. Give it a listen and if you want to hear more, then you'll be able to find the full interview. Then on every Wednesday during the 30 days, I'll choose one of my favorite full length episodes for you to listen to. And if you'd like to join us for the 30 days, make sure you're following the show on your podcast app and turn on episode notifications so you know when the daily clip has been released.

Right, let's get started. For day one, we're starting with the number one team in Formula 1 at the moment, reigning Constructors' Champions, Red Bull Racing. Their team boss, Christian Horner, is the longest serving team principal on the grid, having been in charge since the team's inception in 2005

It's easy to forget that Christian's motorsport career started way before then. So when we first spoke to him on the podcast in 2018, I asked how he ended up in the hot seat at Red Bull.

Christian Horner (2:30)

Why did I cut back even further to 1996?

I was still driving at the time and I decided that I had an amount of sponsorship that I was going to set up a team because that would provide me the best opportunity with the money that I had rather than going to a team and wasting a lot of money and just having a set of result sheets and some overalls at the end of the year. This way with the money I had, I'd still have a car and some assets around me. So originally Arden was set up just as a team as a mechanism for me to go racing, that was my ambition with it, not to be a team principal or anything like that. And I needed a trailer to transport the car around in. And then I was informed of this chap in Austria, Dr. Helmut Marko, he was going to taking his team to America and he had a trailer for sale. So I flew to Graz, I think I was about 24 at the time, I met Helmut, no idea who he was, knew that he was an ex-driver and that was about it.

And we had a pleasant lunch, agreed a deal on this trailer and that was it, shook hands on it. And he said, right, you need to send me the money tomorrow and I'll deliver the trailer in a one week's time to Dover. Anyway, I came back and begged, borrowed and scrounged the money, sent it to Helmut. And that was my first meeting with Helmut who then was running his own team in Formula 3000 at the time.

And then he then took on the Red Bull Junior Program where he had two young drivers, Enrico Bernoldi and Ricciardo Maurizio.

And that, you know, Helmut, he had some success with it but you could see his heart was sort of going out of it and he was becoming more and more involved with Red Bull. And then in the meantime, I'd won the championship with Thomas Enger in 2002 I'd won the championship again in Formula 3000 which is now called Formula 2 with Björn Werdheim in 2003 And for 2004, there was an Italian driver that was a Red Bull junior called Vittorio Liuzzi. And I was desperate to have him in our team because he was the standout driver. And by this time, Helmut was looking after the program. And so I went and negotiated with Helmut and typical Helmut, he wanted to pay cheap. So he offered me half a budget for Liuzzi. And I said, okay, I'll do it for that but you've got to pay a win bonus. How confident were you winning? I thought we might win three or four races. So I said, if we win a race, I'd want to win bonus of I think it was 20,000 euros a race.