Secrets of Success first airs on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Documentaries at 7pm on Wednesday; Christian Horner explains his fiery relationship with Toto Wolff as Sky Sports' Nasser Hussain speaks to 12 leaders in sport to discuss and unpick the secrets of their success
Wednesday 28 June 2023 14:21, UK
Christian Horner says it would be "dishonest" to be "best mates" with Toto Wolff as the Red Bull team principal opens up about his relationship with his Mercedes counterpart in a new Sky Sports documentary.
Secrets of Success, which will first air on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Documentaries at 7pm on Wednesday, sees Sky Sports' Nasser Hussain interview Horner, Wolff and 10 other leaders in sport to discuss and unpick the secrets of their success.
Horner and Wolff are two of the most decorated team bosses in Formula 1 history, with their teams and drivers accounting for every world title in the sport since 2010.
Their rivalry came to a head during the 2021 season as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's world championship battle went down to the final lap in Abu Dhabi, with Horner and Wolff often trading barbs at each other.
Asked by Hussain what his relationship with Wolff was now like, Horner replied: "Toto I have a huge amount of respect for everything that he has done and achieved.
"But we're competitors.
"I've never been a believer that you can be the best mate with your competitor. I think it's dishonest.
"I want everybody in my team to see that whoever we're racing against is the competition, that's who we're there to compete with and as a team that we're united."
Asked the same question about Horner, Wolff said: "He's a good team manager.
"But it's very different personality and very different values to what we have here in the organisation. But he's still successful."
One of the iconic images of the 2021 title fight was Wolff being captured smashing his headset after Hamilton and Verstappen collided in the penultimate race of the season in Saudi Arabia.
Horner says that was the moment he felt Mercedes were creaking under the pressure as the title fight reached its climax.
He said: "Any sport is a mind game but when you see a camp part losing it and smashing a set of headphones up you think 'OK, you're feeling the pressure'. And if he is feeling the pressure, then everybody else around him is feeling the pressure, because pressure permeates from the top.
"I would never smash a set of headphones up.
"Internally I would have smashed mentally those headphones just as hard as him but I just wouldn't have done it physically. I just think everybody is different."
Wolff joined Mercedes in 2013 on the back of the team finishing fifth in the 2012 Constructors' Championship - which remains their worst finish since the
manufacturer returned to F1 in 2010.
Mercedes won a record eight consecutive constructors' titles from 2014-2021 and the Austrian revealed to Hussain he immediately knew how he wanted to transform the team - starting with clearing discarded coffee cups and old newspapers!
"It was completely natural. I walked in here first time at reception and I knew what I wanted to do," Wolff said.
"It's the attention to detail. When I stepped in here first time, I was waiting in reception to meet Ross Brawn, who I have great admiration of as an engineer, and while I was waiting in reception it didn't feel like a Formula 1 reception.
"There was an old Daily Mail that was in many pieces on a table and an old coffee cup with dried coffee inside.
"When I went up to the meeting I said it didn't feel like a Formula 1 team.
"The answer I got was that the Daily Mail or the old coffee cup doesn't make the car faster, engineering does.
"And I disagreed because it shows you whether you have attention to detail, whether you are perfectionists and you seek excellence and that starts with cleanliness - an immaculate environment particularly in Formula 1."
Horner is the longest serving of F1's current team principals having been in charge of Red Bull since they joined the grid in 2005 by purchasing the former Jaguar team.
Horner was just 31 years old when appointed, making him the youngest-ever F1 team principal.
"What I could see when I came here was that you've got lots of different departments working individually, not collectively," said Horner, who has just overseen Red Bull's 100th victory in F1.
"There'd been a revolving door of management through the Jaguar years and people became battle hardened to that - they just kept their heads down and probably thought 'here's another one, a 31-year-old kid turning up he won't last long'.
"And so it was then a question of winning hearts and minds and changing and breaking down that culture.
"The team had a perception of 'we've got the seventh-biggest budget we'll finish seventh' because it's a sport that's dictated by funding.
"Well I just wouldn't accept that and it was a question of how you apply yourself and how you apply yourself to the task."
Also in the documentary, Wolff and Horner discuss:
Nasser Hussain meets some of the most successful leaders in sport to find out how they inspire, motivate and manage their teams to succeed at the highest level - watch Secrets of Success on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Documentaries at 7pm on Wednesday July 28.
Red Bull seek to continue their winning run in 2023 as they return to their home track for the Austrian GP - watch live on Sky Sports F1 from June 30-July 2. Get Sky Sports
