Toto Wolff and Christian Horner have developed perhaps the biggest off-track rivalry in Formula 1. Typically, the most intense hostility is reserved for the drivers, but it often filters through to the teams too.
There is lasting ill-feeling at Mercedes over the events of 2021. While epic for neutrals, the battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton was one of the most bitter in recent F1 history.
Both sides accused the other of improper conduct. For instance, Wolff says he should have called Jos Verstappen to check on Max immediately after his shunt at the British GP.
Hamilton won the race after the lap-one contact with Verstappen, for which he earned a 10-second penalty. The Dutchman had to go to hospital for checks after a massive impact.
Later, the two drivers came together at Monza, with Verstappen deemed to be at fault this time. And there was another penalty for the Red Bull superstar for his overly aggressive tactics against Hamilton in Saudi Arabia.
In the end, the championship was decided by the most controversial race in F1 history. Verstappen passed Hamilton on the final lap of the Abu Dhabi GP to snatch the title, but only after FIA race director Michael Masi incorrectly applied the safety-car restart rules.
Toto Wolff says Christian Horner should have acknowledged Lewis Hamilton heartbreak
Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast, Wolff revisited the aftermath of the race. He still carries some of his grievances.
He wanted Horner to ‘acknowledge’ that Hamilton would have been a ‘deserving’ winner. He felt that the Red Bull boss displayed a lack of sportsmanship by overlooking the heartbreaking circumstances.
Horner carried an air of ‘entitlement’ instead, when Wolff says Mercedes would have been more gracious. The Silver Arrows had won seven straight drivers’ titles, while it was Red Bull’s first crown since 2013.
“I felt that the other side – and that’s not Max – there was not one sentence saying ‘that was a difficult day for Mercedes, we acknowledge it, they’re both deserving champions, today it went against Mercedes’,” Wolff said.
“There was not one word from Christian or the other team [members] in acknowledging that. It was entitlement. We would have said it.”
It’s worth noting that Horner shook Hamilton’s hand in the cooldown room after the race. But Wolff clearly wanted him to pay tribute in his media appearances.
How Toto Wolff plans to ‘humiliate’ Christian Horner in Max Verstappen pursuit
Mercedes would have hoped to exact revenge in 2022, but they weren’t able to compete with a Red Bull team who mastered the challenge of the ground-effect era. There were occasional scraps in 2024, but McLaren and Ferrari ended up as the title protagonists.
Thus, the Red Bull/Mercedes rivalry has taken on new battlegrounds. One of those is the driver market.
Wolff wants to ‘humiliate’ Horner by signing Verstappen for 2026. The 27-year-old has won four straight titles to establish himself as an all-time great.
Karun Chandhok says Wolff is ‘winding up’ Horner in his public pursuit of the world champion. He deliberately held talks with Jos Verstappen at the season-opening Bahrain GP in front of television cameras, a sign of the ongoing media games from both sides.
