Horner Cases Shake F1: Red Bull Staff Left with Fallout

Julien Simon-Chautemps believes the Horner affair has affected Red Bull, impacting team morale and performance throughout the season.

Former race engineer for Kimi Räikkönen, Julien Simon-Chautemps is now an F1 consultant, notably for Canal+. The Frenchman was asked about the impact Adrian Newey’s departure could have on Red Bull, but he downplays the Briton’s role in the team’s recent successes.

“I’m not trying to diminish Adrian’s reputation or his achievements in the sport, but it’s fair to say that the F1 of the 90s is no longer the F1 of today,” Julien Simon-Chautemps told Business of Winning. “There is no longer a single manager.”

“Many people have said it, but I firmly believe a Formula 1 team needs a very good technical director, though he shouldn’t have to do everything alone. Adrian had a lot of people around him, very good people at Red Bull, like Waché as technical director.”

“He has many very good guys in aerodynamics, and I doubt he would have been able to win all these championships on his own. So yes, he’s an extremely important figure in the organization, but he’s not the sole answer to success.”

The engineer reminds us that regulatory changes weren’t necessary for Red Bull to fall back in the hierarchy: “Red Bull was winning relatively easily, very easily last year. The rules haven’t changed much in 2024.”

“If you look at a Formula 1 team’s development trajectory, it’s fairly flat, because you can improve and be competitive, but it’s quite hard to achieve a massive improvement. They clearly tried to enhance a car that was already performing very well and probably went wrong somewhere along the line.”

“They introduced a new floor [in Japan]. It didn’t work as expected, but Max kept winning, so they sort of ignored it. But actually, Pérez struggled even more. So I think they probably went off track on that front.”

Julien Simon-Chautemps is convinced that the Horner affair, following the accusations from the director’s assistant earlier in the year, impacted team morale: “Add to that everything that happened initially with Christian and the internal issues—for a team of about 1,000 people, it matters.”

“It’s certain that this negatively affected people. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a large part of Adrian’s decision was influenced by what happened with Christian at the beginning of the year and how the whole situation was handled.”

“I’m not here to judge, and it’s not my place to do so, but I know many people at Red Bull, and I know it affected the way people worked and thought. It certainly had a negative impact.”