Christian Horner has insisted that his meetings with Toto Wolff are not usually as heated as one particular scene in Drive to Survive made out. The latest season, which was released back in March and filmed throughout last year, included a furious exchange between Horner and Wolff as they clashed over the bouncing experienced by Mercedes.
Wolff wanted the FIA to intervene but Horner was adamant that it was up to individual teams to solve their own issues, at one point telling his rival: “You’ve got a problem, change your f****** car.” He has since explained that although their meetings can get frosty at times, they are generally constructive and do not usually result in shouting matches.
“I don’t tell him to sort his f****** car out at every meeting,” Horner told the ESPN Unlapped podcast. “I mean they get a bit sporty at times but you know, there needs to be healthy debate in Formula One and I think, by and large, that they are usually pretty constructive.”
Horner and Wolff are two of the longest-serving bosses in the F1 paddock, having been with their teams since 2005 and 2013 respectively. They are also two of the most successful, with each of the last 13 years seeing the Constructors’ Championship title won by either Red Bull or Mercedes.
The 49-year-old went on to add that he feels he and Wolff are a dying breed, with the likes of James Vowles and Andrea Stella having moved into their jobs from a more technical background.
“When I look around the room now, there’s very different personalities,” he added. “When I first came into the sport there was Ron Dennis, there was Flavio Briatore, there was Eddie Jordan, there was Jean Todt.
“There was Bernie Ecclestone running it, there was Max Mosley there, Frank Williams, some really big characters and personalities. Of course now you look around the room and maybe it’s just me getting older but there’s more managers there and it’s gotten much more technical than the entrepreneurial side.
“I suppose Toto and myself are perhaps two of the more ‘dinosaur’ type of characters compared to some, even though I’m still on the younger side of the team principals, but the dynamic and the definition of what a team principal is these days is very different to when I first came into this post.
“I think that many of them are now morphing from technical backgrounds, where they’re very focused on technical and perhaps towards the regulations rather than actually thinking about the business and the bigger picture.”
