Red Bull paid Christian Horner £100 million to go. Why won't anyone say why?

£100,482,000.

That is what Red Bull's group paid Christian Horner for losing his job, if you add up two sets of company accounts. RacingNews365 reported the figures on 7 October, from filings at Companies House.

The smaller number is the one in the headlines. Red Bull Racing, the F1 team, lists £33.494 million as compensation for loss of office. Then a sister company, Red Bull Technologies, lists exactly double that. Another £66.988 million.

Nobody has said why the bill was so big. Red Bull has not said why it sacked him, either.

How did one sacking turn into a £100 million bill?

Horner was sacked as boss of the Red Bull F1 team on 9 July 2025. He had run it for 20 years. During that time the team won eight drivers' titles and six constructors' titles.

RacingNews365 says he then resigned from every Red Bull Group job on 13 August 2025. The accounts record the money as "compensation for loss of office". That is the legal name for a payment when a director leaves early.

Here is what the two filings show.

Source: Red Bull company accounts at Companies House, as reported by RacingNews365 (7 October 2026).

Horner is named as the "highest paid director" at both companies.

What does £100 million actually look like?

Spread over one year, £100.482 million works out at about £1.9 million every week.

Compare it with his pay while he still had the job. The two filings give him £13.47 million in normal pay for the year. The exit payment is about 7.5 times that.

Photo: LGEPR / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Add both together and the filings show about £114 million paid out on his name in a single year.

Those are the numbers on paper. The accounts do not say how the deal was built, or what each part pays for. They do not say if it was paid in one go or in pieces either.

Is this the £75 million or £80 million people were told about?

Not quite. It is higher.

When Horner left, the press ran guesses. The Times and the Daily Mail reported a package worth up to £80 million, according to Crash.net. Sky Sports reporter Craig Slater said his sources pointed to roughly £75 million. He added that he had not seen the severance document.

Those were estimates. The filings are the accounts. On paper, the loss-of-office total is about £20 million above the top press figure.

Slater also said Horner took a smaller payout so he could be free to return to F1 in 2026. If that is right, the starting figure was bigger still. Nobody has published the contract, so that part stays a story people tell.

How does it compare with what the team earns?

Badly, if you look at profit. Black Book Motorsport reported in September 2025 that the Red Bull F1 team made a profit of £1.68 million in 2024, on sales of £314.4 million.

The team's own bill to Horner, £33.494 million, is about 20 times that profit. It is also roughly 11 percent of a full year of sales.

Different years, so the comparison is rough. But it shows why fans keep asking what the money was for. A team that makes a tiny profit paid out a sum that big in a single year.

The same report said the estimates of Horner's settlement ranged from £52 million to £90 million, depending on who you asked. The filings now sit above that whole range.

Why was Christian Horner sacked in the first place?

Red Bull has never officially said. The reports and the accounts we read include no statement from Red Bull or from Horner about the reason.

Some F1 media described a power struggle at the top of the group. Red Bull has not confirmed that.

A separate matter sits in the background. In 2024 a colleague made a complaint about Horner. Red Bull said an independent investigation was complete and the grievance was dismissed. Horner has always denied wrongdoing. Nothing in the filings or the reports we read links that complaint to the 2025 exit.

So the two facts sit side by side. A man was sacked with no public reason, and he walked away with a nine-figure payment.

Photo: Phil Guest / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Is Christian Horner coming back to Formula 1?

He wants to, according to reports. Slater said Horner hoped to rejoin the sport in 2026. Reports in September 2025 linked him with Alpine.

In the reports we read, no new team had been confirmed.

Red Bull's paddock has been in the news for other reasons too, in the Liam Lawson push-up clip row.

Why do company filings keep turning up huge numbers?

Because the law makes companies publish them, and very few people read them until a reporter does. Directors' pay is one of the things that has to be listed.

Another story this week came out of trading disclosures, in the case of Trump's SpaceX bonds. Big money often hides in plain sight, in a PDF.

The Horner numbers were there because two companies had to file accounts. Two more did too.

Where is the rest of the money?

Horner was also a director of Red Bull Powertrains and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. Both companies have filed accounts too.

Both returns say his pay for the year "was paid by other Red Bull Group undertakings", according to RacingNews365.

So two companies show the money. Two more say the money came from somewhere else in the group.

Which other company? How much? The filings do not say.