Christian Horner’s F1 return: Which team could he go to?

With Christian Horner now free to return to Formula 1 in 2026, speculation about his next landing spot is rife.

Ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix Aston Martin team boss Andy Cowell said the former Red Bull boss is “ringing up pretty much every team owner” to enquire about how to return.

Horner has agreed a $100 million settlement with Red Bull which will allow him back in the paddock as early as next spring.

Sources have told ESPN he does not simply want a repeat of his former role as team principal and CEO, with power over the F1 team but ultimately no stake in the business at large. It is understood Horner is seeking business partners who might help him buy the kind of stake in a team which would return him to a significant role of power in the paddock.

Although it seems though he’s spreading the net far and wide, genuine options for him seem limited. Here we’ve ranked the likelihood of him returning to any of the non-Red Bull owned teams next year.

– Horner’s 20-year Red Bull career – in pictures

Alpine

This seems like Horner’s best bet by some distance — if you were to take a straw poll in the paddock, they would be the clear frontrunner right now. Well-placed paddock sources have told ESPN this seems to be the most logical choice and there’s a number of reasons why. Alpine, the name Renault rebranded its F1 team to in 2021, has had no clear vision, direction or identity for several years now, and is screaming out for a strong leadership figure to build around.

Perhaps the most poorly-run team in the sport’s recent history, it looks set to finish bottom of the constructors’ championship this season, the final year it will race with Renault-built engines before switching to a Mercedes deal next year.

The controversial, once-banned-for-life Flavio Briatore, a good friend of Horner’s, returned to the team in an executive capacity last year to help facilitate that deal. At the time of his return, many in the paddock believed Briatore was brought back to help sell the team altogether, although new Renault CEO François Provost has insisted that will not be happening any time soon. That does not rule out investments for other bits of the business, however, and this is something Alpine has welcomed before.

In 2023, Alpine took a $218.10 million cash injection from a consortium including Rory McIlroy, Patrick Mahomes and Anthony Joshua, for a 24% equity stake in the business. With F1 booming in popularity, sources in F1 have estimated that consortium could make upwards of a 50% profit on that investment if they sold it today.

Teams are regularly now valued in excess of $1.5 billion. Alpine is known to be open to more outside investment, even if a full sale is off the table for now. Alpine follows the growing trend in the sport of having a team principal (Steve Nielsen) who runs the F1 team, and then an overarching executive boss (Briatore) above. This seems like a perfect system for Horner to fit into in some way should he secure the funds needed to buy a significant portion of the team.

Given the strong existing relationship with Briatore, a willingness from Alpine to take outside investment, and a team desperately needing the cache and pedigree someone like Horner could bring to the table, this ticks all the boxes.

There’s a fun added element here too, one modern fans might have a difficult time picturing. Horner taking a significant role at Alpine would create a fascinating dynamic – it would place him in a working relationship with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, as part of Alpine’s new engine deal. Their frosty relationship is well-documented. That doesn’t diminish the chance of it happening, however, with Wolff having no say in whether Renault’s board accepted an investment or not.

Likelihood: 9/10 – Horner’s most logical landing spot.

Haas

This is an odd one because, on paper, Gene Haas’ little American outfit seems like the most obvious bet, except for one thing: the owner himself.

The Haas team, which joined in 2016, stands out as an anomaly on the modern grid: it’s the smallest in terms of squad size and is based in an old Oxfordshire factory (which it purchased off the old Manor team when it collapsed in 2015) which is slowly falling apart.

Yet, as evidenced by a recent meeting between Horner and a representative of the owner, Haas has no interest in selling even a small stake in the team. Sources have confirmed to ESPN that meeting took place, set up by an independent intermediary, and it was made clear to Horner that there was no opportunity to invest even for a small part of the business.

“That’s it. Nothing has gone any further. It is finished,” Haas F1 team boss Ayao Komatsu said of the Horner link earlier this week. Sources from both sides of the equation have told ESPN a follow-up meeting is not on the cards.

Gene Haas’ mindset has not deviated from this viewpoint, even though the F1 boom of the past five years means he’s effectively sitting on a goldmine compared to the money he spent to enter in the first place.

Sources have told ESPN the root cause of Gene Haas’ falling out with old team boss Guenther Steiner, which led to his departure in early 2024, was Haas’ stubborn refusal to accept outside investment from anywhere else. It is understood Steiner had interested suitors willing to inject a significant boost of cash into the team, but was rebuffed. That’s not to say Haas isn’t investing in his business (the team recently unveiled a new motorhome in the paddock, for example) but there is a strong feeling internally that the team would benefit massively from significant financial help from outside, rather than simply relying simply on big title partnership deals as it has for so long.

Some of these have been notable disasters, such as the infamous Rich Energy link-up, or the Uralkali deal with a Russian oligarch which brought Nikita Mazepin in as a driver and had to be hastily cancelled on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Existing title partner Moneygram’s deal will end at the end of the current season. So that’s the weird paradox of Haas. In fiscal terms, it is absolutely ripe for the kind of investment a Horner-led consortium might bring to the table, but its owner simply does not want to hear it. Then there’s the pedigree someone like Horner (who won eight drivers’ championships and six constructors’ championships as Red Bull boss) might bring to a team which, aside from finishing fifth in 2018, has never been higher than seventh in the constructors’ championship, or scored a grand prix podium finish or win.

Unless Gene Haas softens his stance on that in the coming months, this one seems like a non-starter. With so much riding on next year’s rule change, a rocky start to F1’s new era might be alarming enough to change his mind, although Horner might already have found his next stop by then.

Likelihood: 3/10 – Unlikely, but might still be a wildcard bet.

Aston Martin

ESPN sources say Horner is keen on joining Aston Martin, and it’s clear why he would view Lawrence Stroll’s superteam as an attractive proposition. The level of investment in its Silverstone factory means Aston Martin is a true sleeping giant ahead of next year’s regulation change, with the team’s sights firmly set on winning titles.

Horner’s former Red Bull colleague Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin earlier this year in a deal that involved a shareholding in the team, but in that instance Stroll had his heart set on securing the design genius, which is not the case with Horner.

It’s also a team that has a senior management structure stacked with big hitters, making it unclear what Horner would bring to the party. Among the current top brass is CEO Andy Cowell, who flatly denied the chance of Horner arriving at the team during a press conference in Singapore.

“I had a chat with Lawrence this morning to find out what he knows,” Cowell said on Friday. “It looks as though Christian’s ringing up pretty much every team owner at the moment. I can clearly say there are no plans for involvement of Christian either in an operational or investment role in the future.”

To further dampen the fire, Stroll is known to have an interest in luring Max Verstappen from Red Bull in the coming years and Horner’s toxic relationship with Verstappen’s father, Jos, is unlikely to aid such a move.

Likelihood: 1/10 – stranger things have happened in F1, but not very often.

Ferrari

While still at Red Bull in June, Horner denied stories he had been approached by Ferrari’s CEO John Elkann for a top job.

Speaking in a press conference alongside Alpine boss Flavio Briatore, Horner joked: “My Italian is worse than Flavio’s English, so how on earth would that work?” Elkann and Horner are known to be on good terms after Ferrari considered him for the role at the end of 2022, only for Horner to make clear he was committed to Red Bull at the time.

Any immediate opportunity at Maranello appeared to be ruled out in July, however, when the Italian team confirmed it had renewed team principal Fred Vasseur’s contract with a long-term deal.

Ferrari team principal is also a position in which ultimate control rests with Elkann, and Horner has made clear in the past that he has no interest in being part of a wider corporate structure — a position that will only have been hardened by his Red Bull sacking.

Likelihood: 1/10 – A big U-turn would have to happen to create an opening.

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The numbers behind Christian Horner’s time at Red Bull

Take a look at Christian Horner’s achievements at Red Bull after he was sacked by the F1 team.

Williams

It seems there is no interest from either side in exploring a deal between Williams and Horner.

Team principal James Vowles said there had been no contact with Horner since he left Red Bull, and in the midst of an ongoing rebuilding period, Williams’ owners Dorilton Capital have indicated their team is not for sale. However, pushed on whether Williams might one day entertain an approach from Horner, Vowles was careful not to rule it out.

“I think you should always welcome a conversation,” he said. “There’s no point closing the door. But I think we are very happy with the structure we have, and it’s working. So I don’t see any reason to make any changes to that.”

Likelihood: 1/10 – never say never, but neither side has indicated an interest in the other.

Audi

This year is the last the Sauber name will exist in Formula 1 before it becomes the fully fledged Audi “works” team, the word for one which builds its own car and engine outright.

While it will become Audi in name next year, the German manufacturer has been slowly transforming the Swiss-based team behind the scenes for several years, the fruits of which have started to show this year — Nico Hulkenberg’s shock podium at the British Grand Prix and the strong form of rookie Gabriel Bortoleto give plenty of reason for optimism going forward.

This one is hard to gauge, but does not seem like a very strong option. There’s been no obvious public interest on the Audi side, but for Horner it would represent a great opportunity to get into an exciting new works programme from the ground up but with an existing infrastructure in place, without having to start from scratch like Cadillac’s new team.

It does seem unlikely though. Whether there’s an appetite to sell off more of the team is a valid question — in 2024, Audi confirmed the $510-billion Qatar Investment Authority had purchased a significant minority holding in the team. Reuters later reported that holding to be almost one third of the entire operation.

With Horner looking to enter with a significant share of a team himself, it’s hard to see him fitting in when all the numbers are done. Like with most of these, you can’t rule it out completely, but it’s hard to see Horner fitting in with the kind of meaningful role he is looking for.

Likelihood: 1/10 – Unlikely.

Mercedes

As long as Toto Wolff is at Mercedes there is zero chance of Horner arriving at Red Bull’s long-term rivals.

Wolff recently said he misses having his “great enemy” in the paddock, but that shouldn’t be seen as anything other than a desire to rekindle his old rivalry with Horner should he return at a different team.

Funnily enough, Wolff’s position as a 33-percent joint owner in the F1 team along with Mercedes-Benz and INEOS’s Jim Ratcliffe, is something Horner is hoping to emulate elsewhere. But assuming Horner does make a return, these two giants of the F1 paddock will always reside in different garages.

Likelihood: 0/10 – no chance while old rival Wolff remains a part of the team.

McLaren

While easy to dismiss outright because McLaren CEO Zak Brown and Horner share a mutual disdain for each other, the American is not the owner of the current constructors’ champions.

McLaren is owned by Mumtalakat, the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund, and CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi-based investment group, who together recently acquired full ownership by buying out MSP Sports Capital and other minority shareholders, in a deal which valued McLaren at a lofty £3.5 billion.

That alone might have priced out Horner and any investment partners from a meaningful deal, and that’s then before you consider the other obvious reasons like his relationship with Brown, who has transformed McLaren from a sleeping giant struggling to even make it out of Q1 into a team set to repeat as constructors’ champions and likely to win the drivers’ championship this year.

While all the hypothetical scenarios here would likely see Horner displace or disrupt existing leadership structures in some way were he to take a role with a team, there is no world where McLaren’s owners would entertain removing Brown simply to accommodate a Horner-led investment, nor one where they would try and force the pair to co-exist together.

This is as close to a certain no as you can get.

Likelihood: 0/10 – Never going to happen.

Cadillac

In the wake of Horner’s sacking, he was quickly linked to a role at newcomers Cadillac for 2026.

Given the challenge faced by Cadillac ahead of its debut season, it was possible to make a hypothetical link between F1’s most experienced team boss and the sport’s newest team, but there was nothing to the rumours.

Within the space of a few weeks CEO of the Cadillac Formula 1 team and parent company TWG Motorsports, Dan Towriss, denied the reports. “There have been no talks with Christian Horner. No plans to do that,” Towriss said. “I’d like to officially shut down that rumour.”

Cadillac enters F1 with former Manor boss Graeme Lowdon as team principal.

Likelihood: 0/10 – Cadillac has ruled Horner out and there’s been no signs of interest from Horner.