The McLaren chief executive, Zak Brown, has said Formula One enjoys a “healthier” atmosphere after the departure of Christian Horner and accused the former Red Bull team principal of “crossing the line”.
Horner was released from his position following the British Grand Prix last month after 20 years in charge at Red Bull following a long-running power struggle between the team principal and the parent company, Red Bull GmbH.
The last 18 months of his reign were overshadowed by an accusation from a female colleague of “coercive behaviour”. Horner always denied the claim and was twice exonerated.
Horner was replaced by the Racing Bulls team principal, Laurent Mekies, which Brown welcomed, and revealed he had met the new man in the lead-up to the race in Hungary on Sunday.
“I’m happy Laurent’s in the role he is in,” Brown said. “I like Laurent, that’ll be healthy, and maybe we can get back to focusing on competition on the track.
“There’s always going to be some political aspects to the sport, but I think it is going to be healthier with Laurent. I’m a fan of Laurent, I have known him for a long time, and it’ll be good to go racing against him.”
Brown and Horner had repeatedly locked horns in recent years, not least earlier this season when Brown was clearly frustrated at what he believed were erroneous suggestions about the legality of the McLaren car, which he felt had been unacceptable behaviour from Horner.
“It went too far,” Brown said. “There’s always going to be politicking in F1; let’s try and shut down their flexi-wings and that stuff, but when you start getting into frivolous allegations, that’s just going too far.
“If I look up and down the pit lane now, I see us fighting each other hard politically but the line is not being crossed, and that line got crossed before. So I think that we’ll see a little bit of a change for the better.
“There’s a higher level of trust that now if we sit down and have a conversation on a topic where we think there could be some confidentiality, and it’s just not an automatic: ‘I’m going to use that as a political weapon.’
“We’re going to be in a better place, a little bit more unified, and a little bit more trusting that while we’re fighting on track, we can have a conversation about what’s good for the sport off it. And that won’t get manipulated for political reasons and taken out of context.”
