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So what does Red Bull think it's gaining by firing Horner?

 One way of looking at Horner's firing is that the team considers itself in rebuild mode. They need a new development philosophy and perhaps a bit of a restructure to fill any gaps left by those that have left. Horner had potentially not demonstrated that he felt the need, or perhaps wasn't moving quickly enough, to achieve this.


The tools have been allowed to grow stale - the wind tunnel and so on - and that was under his watch. A watch that had no limitations when it came to funding there was no reason a new wind tunnel couldn't have been ready for the ground effect era and now it won't be ready to design the 2026 car.

It may even be that Horner's effectiveness was blunted in the cost cap era. He built RBR in Mateshietz's money-no-object passion project. If that meant building two updates so both drivers got pace added tot he car in the manner they could deal with RBR could afford it. For example the two sets of exhausts that the team ran in the blown diffuser era, the reworking of the chassis suspension pick-up points on one car for one driver.

But with the cost cap, maybe Horner simply defaulted to a Verstappen favouring update process because RBR weren't efficient to be able to develop wider. And lets be honest Horner got away with it until this year.

We will learn the truth in thirty years or so!
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