Christian Horner is the youngest team principal in the Formula One Paddock. He’s also been in the job since Red Bull Racing came into the sport, leading many to believe he took the position while still at school.

Now 36, and an established and respected member of the F1 paddock, Christian takes Red Bull Racing into a sixth Formula One season, having masterminded the team’s evolution from humble midfielder to its current standing as a serious championship contender. Under his leadership the team has recruited a design group filled with championship-winning pedigree, while also shaping a garage crew that compares favourably with the best in the business. On track Christian’s decision to team Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel was immediately successful, with the pair winning six races in 2009 and taking ten other podium finishes. Continuity is also high on his list of priorities, hence Red Bull Racing goes into 2010 as the most settled operation in Formula One.

Christian Horner’s career in motorsport began behind the wheel. After winning a Formula Renault scholarship in 1991, he competed in the 1992 British Formula Renault Championship with Manor Motorsport, finishing that season as a race winner and the highest placed rookie. He then moved up to F3 and won more races before progressing to F3000 for 1996, racing in the (rather confusingly titled) British Formula 2 Championship. He made the natural move into the International F3000 series for 1997, extraordinarily as both driver and entrant, having started his own racing team, Arden International – not the typical path for a 24-year-old racer. After two seasons Christian retired from the cockpit to concentrate on running the business.

In a few short years Arden developed into an F3000 powerhouse, winning numerous driver and team championships. During this period, and latterly as a GP2 team, Horner’s squad gained a reputation for encouraging talent capable of making it all the way to Formula One. Vitantonio Liuzzi, Heikki Kovalainen, and Sébastien Buemi have all won races for Arden, as has 2010 F1 rookie Bruno Senna.

Monaco skinny-dipping notwithstanding, Christian’s presence in the paddock tends to be understated; a reputation as a diplomat rather than screamer ensures his opinions are often called upon as a voice of reason by both the media and F1’s administrators. As a younger man he was F3000’s representative to the FIA; this year he will be chairing the FOTA F1 Sporting Working Group. His main challenge, however, will be ensuring Red Bull Racing builds upon its excellent showing in 2009.

“For us 2009 ended too soon!” he says. “Finishing the year with consecutive victories in Japan, Brazil and Abu Dhabi was terrific. In the early part of the year the diffuser issue caused us some difficulty, but I’m incredibly proud of the way everyone responded and the hard work that went into developing the car really paid off. We made great strides once the new diffuser was up and running and I think we had the best chassis of anyone, certainly in the second half of the season.”

“Having won grands prix, achieved pole positions and finished second in both the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships, our goal for 2010 has to be to go for the Championship. We have some formidable opponents but we demonstrated we’re a front-running team, so our target will be to start in Bahrain where we left off in Abu Dhabi.”
 

During 30 years in motorsport Adrian Newey has developed something of a legend. He’s heralded as an original thinker, a maverick designer, the heir to the legacy of Colin Chapman and a softly-spoken genius. But the thing he’s best known for is winning.

His thesis on the science of ground-effect in aerodynamics attracted the attention of the motor racing community and in 1980, shortly after graduation from Southampton University, Newey began working for the Fittipaldi F1 team. He soon moved to March, beginning work as a race engineer in Formula 2 before moving on to design. While Newey is first and foremost regarded as a Formula One designer, his early successes came in American racing: his first sports car design for March won the IMSA’s GTP class in 1983 and 1984, though Adrian had already moved to March’s IndyCar project. His first effort, the March 85C, won both the Championship and the Indy 500, while his follow-up model won the Championship in 1986 and the Indy 500 in both ’86 and ‘87.

Newey briefly left March to work for Carl Haas, first at the FORCE F1 team and latterly back in IndyCar as a race engineer for Mario Andretti. It was a short-lived soujourn and Newey soon returned to March, masterminding the constructor’s return to F1, as technical director. He moved on to Williams at the end of 1990 and began a decade in which everything he touched turned to extremely rapid gold. In partnership with Patrick Head, Newey’s first car for Williams won seven races in 1991; its successors won five Constructors’ titles in the next six years, made world champions of Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve, gifted a fourth title to Alain Prost and introduced a callow youth by the name of David Coulthard to the top step of the podium. When Newey departed Williams for fresh challenges at McLaren, he confirmed his prowess with three further titles, rounding off the decade with the 1998 Constructors’ title and two world championships for Mika Hakkinen.

Newey’s McLarens continued to win races in the 21st Century, taking several championships down to the wire and never failing to win individual grands prix. His final effort in 2005 won ten of the season’s 19 races but somehow managed to dodge both titles. In search of a new challenge Adrian moved on once again, to Red Bull Racing, the attraction of which lay in the potential to create a winning team virtually from scratch.

“In truth when I joined Williams and McLaren, they were teams that had won championships and clearly had the infrastructure to be capable of doing so in the future,” says Adrian. “It meant they were able to get to the point of winning races and championships quite quickly whereas Red Bull Racing was a very different case – which was what appealed to me. It was a very young team, which offered me the opportunity to be centrally involved in developing not only the design of the car but the whole infrastructure of the engineering team.”

It’s a widely-held belief that Adrian does his best work whenever F1 undergoes one of its periodic regulatory upheavals, moving development away from number crunching and briefly allowing creativity and intuition to come back to the fore. 2009 demonstrated that in ample measure: Red Bull Racing’s breakthrough season had Adrian’s RB5 taking five pole positions and score six victories.

“I do enjoy regulation changes such as those we had last year,” reflects Adrian. “They allow you to sit back with the clean sheet of paper and from first principals try to work out the best solutions to those regulations. Eleven years since a big change, and four years since any change at all meant F1 became quite repetitive. Nobody was coming up with new ideas; there were just lots of little alterations on existing, well-established themes… and I don’t find that quite as interesting.”

The idea of a clean sheet of paper isn’t just a metaphor. Despite the non-stop technological advancement of F1, Adrian still likes to use the drawing board rather than a supercomputer when he’s feeling creative. Away from the office he indulges a passion for classic sports cars, as both a keen collect and amateur racer. Not one to let the laws of physics stand in the way of a borderline overtaking opportunity, he’s had some high-profile scraps in recent years, but - undaunted by the bruises and occasional concussion - has progressed to more serious racing, finishing a highly creditable fourth in class and 22nd overall in the 2007 24 Heures Du Mans while driving an AF Corse Ferrari F430. He also won the 2009 Goodwood Revival TT Race, sharing his Lightweight E-Type Jaguar with his old friend, Bobby Rahal.

Members of the garage crew will whisper that an even more impressive driving performance involving Adrian, a donuting Ferrari California and Christian Horner’s lawn took place after the team’s 1-2 finish at Silverstone last year.

Our head of aerodynamic development joined Red Bull Racing from the McLaren Formula One team where he’d undertaken a similar role for 15 years. Peter studied Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College London, after which he spent 15 years at McLaren. For Peter it’s the coming together of science and sport which makes his job great. And the highlight of his career before he joined us at Milton Keynes? Winning ten races at McLaren in 2005. As, after years of struggling, the team demonstrated they could produce the best car in the field. Away from Formula One, Peter enjoys football (he’s a Tottenham Hotspurs fan) and racing, although in his downtime it’s kart racing with his son.

Our head of design joined us from the Renault F1 team where he was head of mechanical design. A native of Somerset, Rob’s passions away from the track are his county’s cricket side and Bath Rugby Club. And a keen supporter of the English national team in any sport.

David Coulthard has been part of the fabric of Red Bull Racing since the team was founded. He competed for us in our first season, he scored our first points in our first race and took our first podium in Monaco in 2006… and then in 2008 after four years competing for us, he hung up his race suit.

But, we haven’t let go of his services easily. The highest ever British grand prix points-scorer, a man with 247 races, 535 points and 62 podiums to his name is someone whose experience every team could do with. Thankfully for Red Bull, in 2009 he became our racing consultant and sometime reserve driver. After all, he was going to be at every round anyway because rather than simply walk away from the Paddock, David took up a new challenge in 2009, becoming commentator a (and foil for Eddie Jordan) for his home TV network, the BBC. He’ll continue his media work for us and the BBC in 2010 as well as no doubt taking part in the odd Running Showcar event of two.

David is also an ambassador for Wings For Life, the research foundation which is working towards a cure for spinal cord injuries.