Ex-F1 Team Boss Warns Aston Martin from Signing Christian Horner over Adrian Newey factor

Ex-F1 team boss Guenther Steiner isn't in favor of Aston Martin signing Christian Horner following Adrian Newey's entry in 2025.

Ex-F1 Team Boss Warns Aston Martin from Signing Christian Horner over Adrian Newey factor

Adrian Newey and Christian Horner (images via IMAGO), Aston Martin F1 logo (via Aston Martin)

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Aston Martin has suffered from a dismal outing in the 2025 season. The Silverstone-based constructor has failed to amass any notable results despite raking in aero-genius Adrian Newey from Red Bull. The team still hopes for a much better outing in the coming year, especially after Newey’s entry. However, ex-F1 team boss and DTS fame Guenther Steiner talks about the threat of signing Christian Horner for a leadership role within the constructor if it ever came to that.

Christian Horner recently suffered from an extremely disappointing end to his leadership role at Red Bull. The longest-serving team principal in F1 was ousted from Milton Keynes after serving the team loyally for over 20 years. Since his exit, Horner was reported to consider a move to multiple teams, with Alpine seemingly having more interest in the Briton. Although Aston Martin hasn’t been an ardent contender to pick up the 50-year-old, Guenther Steiner still pondered over the what-if.

Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin after their 2025 F1 challenger was already built. As such, the technical wizard had no role in the AMR25’s success or failure. However, the team can expect a much better outing under the new regulations in the 2026 season. Speaking on the possibility of Christian Horner ever joining Silverstone in the coming season, Guenther Steiner reckoned that the team did not really need the former at the moment.

Steiner recalled that Red Bull had a lot of unhappiness within the squad and hence wanted changes in the leadership. The Italian emphasized that in their final years, Horner and Adrian Newey had a lot of problems within them, and it was probably one of the reasons for the technical wizard’s exit. As such, bringing back the Briton would not fix the issues at Aston Martin, but rather only increase the complications.

I don’t think Aston Martin need Christian right now. I think there was a lot of unhappiness internally and something had to change. The change was Christian leaving, and they are just trying to go back to their glory days now. In the last year the problem between Adrian and Christian was one of the reasons why Adrian left Red Bull. So, bringing Christian back, I don’t think that would work at the moment.

Guenther Steiner said, as reported by planetf1

Guenther Steiner labels Christian Horner’s final years as ‘drama’ at Red Bull

Red Bull had suffered from a drastic performance slump compared to the dominant outing in the 2023 season. Max Verstappen seemed to be unable to keep up with the dominant winning pace after the woeful pace of recent years. As such, Guenther Steiner pointed out that the performance slump was nothing but incompetence from Christian Horner as he was unable to improve the team amid their incessant issues.

Christian Horner, Max Verstappen and Helmut Marko (via Red Bull)
Christian Horner, Max Verstappen and Helmut Marko (via Red Bull)

Christian Horner also suffered from a controversial situation involving a female employee at Red Bull. Although he was cleared of any wrongdoing on two separate occasions, people still lost faith in him. As such, Guenther Steiner recalled that all the races in the final one and a half years were filled with dramatic events involving Horner. Moreover, Aston Martin seemed well prepared for the challenge in the upcoming season and succeeding with the current set of employees within the team.

With Red Bull, we could see it during the last one-and-a-half years where every race weekend there was drama and that has gone away. I think Aston Martin, with the people they have in place, are very well set to show what they can do under the new regulations.

Guenther Steiner noted

Aston Martin still has to work extremely hard on their challenger in the 2026 season as they also partner up with Honda. Adrian Newey already has succeeded at Red Bull with the Japanese giant and is likely not to face many difficulties in achieving success in the coming season as well. Hence, time will tell about how the upcoming years pan out for the Silverstone-based constructor.

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