Red Bull boss Horner aims 'just a brand' dig at Mercedes and Ferrari in ominous warning
Christian Horner has insisted that Red Bull are going to "take on" the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has described the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari as “just a brand” as he outlined plans to defeat them from 2026 onwards despite being an engine customer. Other teams are manufacturers themselves and create their own power units, which is thought to be a big factor in their bids to topple Horner and Max Verstappen.
Red Bull have retained an exclusive partnership with Honda throughout their time in F1 and enjoyed huge success together, having won 21 out of 22 races last season. Verstappen took his third championship in a row and his team-mate Sergio Perez wrapped up second place in the drivers’ standings.
But the team are taking a risk in becoming their own power unit manufacturers by 2026, with Mercedes, Honda, Ferrari, Renault and Audi all joining them in a highly competitive field. But Horner insists that the big names can be beaten and the name should not hold any weight.
“I think you’ve got to be brutally honest with yourself and I think that sometimes you’ve got to take yourself out of the comfort zone,” Horner told the Secrets of Success podcast. “And I think that there’s a difference between risk and weighing up risk, and reckless decisions.
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“And so you try to calculate the risk by doing your research, but then you need not be afraid of making a big decision, whether it’s moving from one manufacturer to another as an engine supplier, or even the biggest decision that we’ve had recently is to say, ‘Okay, as a subsidiary of an energy drinks company, we’re going to manufacture our own engine.
“‘We’re going to take on Mercedes and Ferrari and Renault and Audi and the might of the VW Group, on our own, as an independent engine manufacturer’.”
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Red Bull and Honda’s partnership concludes at the end of the 2025 season, and Horner admitted that he knows it is “completely nuts” to take on established brands but yet they are willing to take the plunge.
“When you think about that, it’s completely nuts to think that we would have the wherewithal of an OEM,” he added. “But again, it comes down to culture, it comes down to the quality of people, it comes down to the work ethic that there there is and that sense of team, obviously needing the right facilities and tools to do the job.
“And if you have those key ingredients in place, why can’t we beat Mercedes? Why can’t we beat Ferrari? It’s just a label, it’s just a brand. Anybody is beatable.”