(BBC) – The future of the Red Bull Formula 1 team is in the spotlight as their boss Christian Horner faces an internal hearing on Friday into a complaint of inappropriate behaviour.
The 50-year-old, who has led Red Bull Racing since its founding in 2005, will be quizzed by an independent lawyer on the complaint.

Parent company Red Bull Gmbh, based near Salzburg in Austria, said on Monday that it is taking the allegations against Horner “extremely seriously.”
The team has not confirmed the nature of the complaint made against Horner but BBC Sport understands the claims relate to an allegation of inappropriate and controlling behaviour.

Horner has denied the allegations in a comment to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, external as well as inside an F1 Commission meeting of team bosses, governing body the FIA and commercial rights holders F1 earlier this week.
Horner’s future has been the subject of intense speculation in the world of F1 in the days since the allegations emerged on Monday.

Many insiders who have discussed the situation with BBC Sport do not expect him to survive in his role.
However, Horner is a powerful and influential man, both inside Red Bull and within F1, and it remains to be seen whether this will lead to his downfall.

Whichever way the hearing on Friday goes, major questions now revolve around Red Bull.
If Horner is removed from his position, either by being sacked or resigning, sources say he would be replaced by an executive from the Austrian side of Red Bull.

Could that be Oliver Mintzlaff, former head of RB Leipzig football team and, since co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz’s death in October 2022, chief executive officer of corporate projects with oversight of F1?

The Newey question
Horner has done an excellent job turning Red Bull into a winning machine, which last year produced the most dominant season in F1 history, taking victories in 21 of the 22 races among an avalanche of new records.

But to suggest he was singlehandedly responsible for their success would be to misunderstand Red Bull.
The team’s main secret is chief technical officer Adrian Newey, to many minds the greatest design engineer F1 has ever seen.
The 65-year-old is a unique talent with a vision for aerodynamics – the key science behind success in F1 – like no-one else in the sport’s history.

Red Bull have managed to set up a structure around Newey that maximises his creative talents while removing from him the areas in which he is either less interested or less skilled. Before that, he was famously bogged down by the complicated ‘matrix’ management structure imposed on him at his former team McLaren.

Success in F1 is never down to one person, but if you were forced to pick a single name as the decisive influence at Red Bull, it would without any question be Newey.

It is not a given that Newey would be discomforted by Horner’s departure. They may share an extreme level of competitiveness but they are very different characters, Newey’s diffident nature contrasting with Horner’s front-foot aggression.

Nevertheless, the two are closely connected. It was former F1 driver David Coulthard who convinced Horner that Newey was the key to success when he joined Red Bull from McLaren for their debut season 19 years ago.