Formula One
So, on the fan scale, I am firmly entrenched in "casual". And I'm too lazy to wade through all that has been written about the subject of the Red Bull/Horner "investigation". As far as I can tell, Horner did something questionable, Red Bull investigated and found no wrong-doing, but there are still people saying Horner should be gone. Can one of you fine folks please summarize what's going on?
It hasn't been fully transparent (for perhaps some good reasons) so it's hard to know exactly what's going on. But apparently there was an allegation, in early February, of Horner's "inappropriate, controlling behavior" regarding a female employee at Red Bull Racing. In response to the internal allegation that was apparently leaked to a Dutch newspaper, RBR hired an external firm (law firm) to conduct an investigation - which began fairly soon thereafter. Then weeks went by and Toto Wolff and Zak Brown called for greater transparency and even Ford's CEO (US automaker who is partnering with RBR on their power unit starting in 2026) made comments that they were dissatisfied with the amount of information they were being given.
Last Friday as the season is kicking off, Red Bull announced that the investigation had "cleared" Horner of any wrongdoing. Horner was at Bahrain and conducting a typical RBR race weekend (taking 1st and 2nd). Meanwhile, in response to the announcement that Horner had been cleared, some anonymous account sent a dump of alleged "evidence" from the case (during FP3 actually), including What's App screenshots between Horner and the female, to a host of European media and other figures in the F1 paddock. Clearly the intent of the dump is to call for pressure outside of RBR to sanction or terminate Horner.
As far I can tell, the evidence hasn't been posted because it isn't verified - the material was sent from an anonymous account and hidden IP address, and it doesn't contain any way of authenticating it apart from by those who were involved. Horner gave a response where he said "I'm not going to comment on anonymous speculation" - which isn't really the same as saying the material was forged/fake.
Then the next turn came when Jos Verstappen (Max's dad) publicly said that Horner remaining with the team was "tearing [the team] apart" - and that Max remaining with RBR would be difficult if Horner stayed. Of course, Max didn't say any of this himself and Jos is known to be a loose cannon who doesn't necessarily speak for Max.
Then, there was also this interesting report that when the allegations first were made to Red Bull, the parent company CEO Oliver Mintzlaff was prepared to fire Horner then - but the report was that Horner's lawyers intervened and convinced the company to conduct an independent investigation before taking action.
https://sports.yahoo.com/christian-...qaTNlZwmjhmMLVNLBIQS1JFABAWRi8cfhoaVaFVoClk8a
https://jalopnik.com/red-bull-was-ready-to-fire-christian-horner-but-he-thr-1851304858