Christian Horner mulls over the question with a smile on his face, testing it, trying to imagine how differently his life might have turned out. “I mean, who knows?” he replies eventually, returning to his toast. “There are so many ‘what-ifs’ in life, aren’t there? I’m pleased with the journey I went on, the path I chose. I don’t regret the decisions I made. And look, Toto’s done tremendously well. I can’t deny that.”

I had asked the ex-Red Bull team principal about the revelation in his new book, Drive, that he once turned down the Mercedes team principal job, before it was offered to his nemesis Toto Wolff. It is no exaggeration to describe the decision as one of the biggest counterfactual turning points in Formula One history.

Imagine a world without Horner vs Wolff on Drive to Survive. A whole generation of F1 fanatics, weaned on their rivalry, might never have existed (although Wolff, who was then an executive director at Williams F1, would surely have made it to the top via another route).

A world without Wolff’s furious radio message to Michael Masi, the race director, at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – “No, Michael! No, no, Michael, that was so not right!” – after Masi’s controversial call to restart the race denied Lewis Hamilton an eighth world title and handed Max Verstappen his first.

A world in which Horner never fell out with Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s special adviser, or Jos Verstappen, the father of his champion driver, or was twice investigated – and cleared – of inappropriate behaviour towards a female colleague.

There was also the power struggle at Red Bull after the death of Dietrich Mateschitz, the company’s founder, in 2022 and bad blood that festered between key players, particularly after the allegations levelled against him. Horner maintains the timing of that was “not coincidental”.

It is partly as a result of that last farrago that he finds himself sitting at his kitchen table in Highgate on a rainy autumn morning, talking about his autobiography, rather than cracking the whip in Milton Keynes.

‘I had never felt so unhappy’

Chatting away while chomping on some breakfast, having just returned from dropping his nine-year-old son, Monty, at school, Horner looks happy enough. It is 15 months since he was unceremoniously relieved of his duties by Red Bull, leading to that tearful address to factory staff, who gave him an ovation as he left the stage. It is an experience he describes in the book as “humbling”. He says he feels like a different man, having finally stepped off the hamster wheel. All right, having been pushed off. Horner attended 405 race weekends on the trot, never missing one in more than two decades.

Now 52, with silvery stubble, he insists he has much for which to be thankful. He divides his time between this house in Highgate – which belonged to his wife, Geri, the former Spice Girl, before they starting seeing each other more than 10 years ago – and the country house in Oxfordshire that he bought with ex-partner, Beverley Allen, at the start of his F1 journey.

Their blended, very modern family, which includes Bluebell, Geri’s daughter from a previous relationship, who is in her final year at university, and Olivia, Horner’s 13-year-old daughter with Beverley, as well as Monty, will shortly be going on tour with him to promote the book as part of a series of “Evenings With…”.

“Yeah, it’s half-term,” he says, cheerfully. “So we’re going on a bit of a tour. You forget there are so many great towns and cities in the UK. You know, the children have never been to York before, or Glasgow, or Bath, or Nottingham. Who knows, might find Robin Hood there. So, yeah, they’re going to join me for some of it, which will be great. I’m looking forward to that and it needs to be fun.”

Fun was not a word that applied much to Horner’s final years at Red Bull. Even when the team were at the peak of their “second era”, with Verstappen winning 21 out of 22 races in 2023, he was utterly miserable. “I was unhappy with the politicking and rumour-mongering, and fed up with the internal bickering,” he writes in his book. “At that point in my career, I was living out my dreams, but I had never felt so unhappy.”

The enforced sabbatical has allowed Horner to gain some perspective.

“I think having this time out… you realise there is life outside Formula One,” he says. “When you’re in Formula One, it is in danger of consuming you. The phone is always going, particularly when you’re in a role at the top of an organisation. You never turn off. You never switch off.

“So, you know, having that bit of time out and doing things that I haven’t had a chance to do, whether it’s a drive around Scotland, or attending school matches, or walking Monty to school this morning, rather than being in Singapore [as the sport was last weekend], or going to the theatre tomorrow night on my daughter’s birthday. There are things that, you know, I wouldn’t have been present for and value very, very much.”

Culinary disaster ruins Rosberg move

Growing up in rural Warwickshire, Horner had always been obsessed with motorsport, and Formula One in particular. There are some amusing passages in the book in which he describes his rise from boy racer to F3000 competitor, somehow scraping the funding together every year, including once from his hero Nigel Mansell, who donated £5,000 to help finance his move to F3000. It was never confirmed that Mansell was behind it, but he assumed that was the case as the slip of paper was headed with an Isle of Man address. Did he ever establish whether that was the case?

“I mentioned it to Nigel many years later when he was an F1 steward,” Horner says, shaking his head. “And I think he’d forgotten his generosity at the time. It was pocket change [for him] at that time. But it was a gesture that was hugely appreciated.”

Horner was always more cut out for management, though. Preppy, but with an eye for business. He recalls arriving for a Formula Renault course explainer at Williams’s Grove headquarters one year wearing his “best blazer and tie, and a pair of polished school shoes”. “I stood out like a sore thumb,” Horner admits. “The other attending karters were dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, and their hair was gelled and spiky. Meanwhile, I most resembled a debater from the Oxford Union.”

Other memorable stories from the book involve taking a young Nico Rosberg to Beverley’s pub, the Fox, near Banbury, when Horner was considering signing the German for his Arden team. Rosberg ordered the steak and ale pie, only to break out in a sweat. It turned out Beverley had accidentally dropped a pot of chilli powder into the dish. “He later signed elsewhere,” Horner notes. Did he ever fess up to Rosberg? “I don’t think so, this is going to be news to him,” Horner admits. “He may remember needing the toilet after the visit. I don’t know, but... yeah that was funny.”

There is a classic with Flavio Briatore doing an engine deal with Red Bull, which involved the energy-drinks company not only sponsoring the Italian’s Billionaires Club in Sardinia but also taking out a corporate box at QPR, for whom Briatore was at that point a director. Only when the Red Bull marketing people went to use it, they found it overlooked the car park. “When I called Flavio and expressed my frustrations, he shrugged. ‘Well, you never told me you wanted to watch the football,’ he said.”

The revelation which stands out, and which Horner has never before said publicly, is that offer to join Mercedes. It arrived after Horner had helped Niki Lauda, the non-executive chairman of Mercedes at the time, sign Lewis Hamilton from McLaren at the end of 2012.

Horner was hoping to weaken his then rivals from Woking, and had thought of a way Lauda might get it past the Mercedes board. “I suggested he underwrite the contract himself. If a deal was agreed, Niki would likely make his money back through the sales of merchandise alone,” Horner writes.

Whether Lauda did or did not take up his advice, Mercedes signed Hamilton. And later that year, Lauda went to visit Horner at his home in Oxfordshire, offering him the chance to work with the now seven-time world champion at Brackley. Horner recalls Lauda saying: “Red Bull will never pay you what Mercedes can. I respect you as a racer. I want you to come. Besides, Helmut is a miserable b------.” 

He claims he turned Lauda down, saying he felt a loyalty to Mateschitz and the team. He did not realise it would change the course of recent F1 history. “Niki was a great guy,” he says now of the three-time world champion, who died in 2019. “He had a real charm and charisma about him. You know, he came and spent time at the house and he was pretty convincing. But as I say, I don’t regret anything.”

Inevitably, the final years and chapters are less fun. Horner’s £80m settlement with Red Bull precludes him from saying too much about the shenanigans of the last few years. It feels as if he pulls a lot of punches, although he does throw a few to Marko’s ribs. At one point, Horner remarks candidly that the Austrian’s role within the team was always a source of confusion. “He never wore the official uniform, only parts of it, and very few people really understood who Helmut was, or what he was doing.”

‘Ferrari is not my dream’

He also effectively accuses the octogenarian – possibly with the backing of Verstappen’s management – of torpedoing deals to bring Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc to the team to partner Verstappen. “I was disappointed,” he writes. “Every team wants to field the world’s two best drivers because it pushes their team to greater heights and delivers a greater chance of winning the constructors’ championship. I knew Max and Charles would have got us there.”

It is interesting that he has chosen to write this book now, I say. By his own admission, Horner is looking for a way back to the paddock. He has rich backers, prepared to buy into any suitable outfit. Making waspish remarks about rivals, settling scores, risks upsetting the apple cart.

Already, some innocuous comments Horner gave to The Times – when it serialised the book – about Ferrari being “the dream” team in F1, made headlines, leading to a full-blown meltdown at Maranello and a vote of confidence in beleaguered team principal Fred Vasseur. “That was unfortunate,” Horner says. “He was a nice guy that did the interview, a lifelong fan of Lewis, and he asked me about Ferrari, and, you know, I was trying to be respectful. I wasn’t saying it was ‘my dream’. I’ve got a great fund of people behind me. But I would never dream of approaching Ferrari about that because they’re not sellers.”

Horner is less forthcoming on where he might come back, or with whom. He is self-aware enough to realise he is both “the cure and the problem” for many teams. His arrival would necessarily spell the end for someone. And he only wants to come back somewhere he has full control. He meditates on how F1 has changed over the years.

“When I first came into the sport, team principals were the CEOs, they were the owners, they were more entrepreneurial. You had characters like Ron Dennis, Flavio, Frank Williams, Jean Todt, Eddie Jordan. Now the role of a team principal is very different. I would say the only ‘old-school’ sort of team leaders that are currently in place are Toto, and to a certain degree Zak [Brown]. I have no desire just to go and sit on a pit wall at 24 races a year. If I get involved in something, I think my value is much more at a strategic level, driving value into a team and setting direction, creating a culture, attracting the right talent. Which is what I did for the last 21 years.”

Red Bull’s in-house power unit a vindication

Horner says he has unfinished business. He wants to resume hostilities with Wolff, which he thinks is missing right now. “Zak has the balls, but he can’t because he’s an engine customer [of Mercedes],” he says of the lack of frisson. If he never gets another chance, though, he will be proud of everything he achieved. Not least Red Bull’s recent wins with a power unit designed and built in a factory in Milton Keynes, which resembled “nothing more than a hole in the ground” five years ago. 

“Everyone thought we were mad to do that,” he says. “It’s been quite emotional the number of messages and congratulations I’ve had from throughout the company, from shareholders, employees. I had an exchange with Max, which was very nice.”

Horner’s time is up. He has to be off. Half-term book tours to plan. The last few years, the way it ended at Red Bull, the embarrassment it caused his family, the death of Beverley, after a two-year battle with eye cancer, just one week before his firing by Red Bull – they had long since reconciled, sharing custody of Olivia – encouraged him to re-evaluate what is important in life.

Although Horner says in the book he was happy to be portrayed as “Drive to Survive’s equivalent of Darth Vader”, he insists that is not the real him. “Geri always likened Drive to Survive to being like the Kardashians on wheels,” he reflects. “You know, it’s reality TV basically. They’re making a show. That’s very different to the person that I am on a day-to-day basis. Now, you might not be everybody’s cup of tea but I let go a long time ago of the fear of not being liked. So long as I’m comfortable in my own skin and my family loves me, that’s enough.”