Lessons in Leadership from Formula 1: Christian Horner vs Toto Wolff
High pressure is a given in F1 and Tech. What changes everything is how you lead.
This past year, I’ve fallen deep into the world of Formula 1.
It started with the Senna series on Netflix, then came Drive to Survive, and next thing you know, I’m watching all the live races, feeling the adrenaline of each win and each loss like they were mine.
At first, it was just entertainment. But the more I watched, the more I understood that racing is just one part of F1. The rest is teamwork, strategy, mindset, and leadership at the highest levels. And if you’ve been reading me for a while, you know those are exactly the things I care most about, and Formula 1 is rich with lessons in all of them.
Why this matters:
Just like Formula 1, Tech is no stranger to pressure. In Silicon Valley and beyond, we celebrate efficiency, chase ambitious goals, and play to win. Both worlds demand high performance and come with intense pressure. That’s why F1 feels so familiar, a different arena, but similar high stakes, intensity, and leadership lessons.
Today, I want to zoom in on one lesson that stood out the most: how a team leader’s mindset and messaging shape how their people perform.
To do that, let’s compare the leadership styles of two of the most well-known leaders in the sport: Christian Horner (as of yesterday, former Team Principal of Red Bull Racing) and Toto Wolff (Team Principal of Mercedes).
I’ll also explain how all this applies to the Tech industry and what you can learn from these F1 leaders.
Note: as I was wrapping up this piece, Christian Horner was sacked from Red Bull. See my thoughts on it at the end of the article.
What you need to know about Formula 1
There are two major titles in F1:
the Drivers’ Championship for the top-performing driver
and the Constructors’ Championship for the team with the most combined points
Teams care about both championships: for pride, legacy, and money. The higher they finish in the Constructors’ standings, the more prize money they receive. In 2024, that pool exceeded $1.2 billion.
Drivers only score points if they finish a race in the top 10. That means every position counts.
To maximize the team’s performance, you want both drivers as high as possible. The challenge is that balancing team success with individual ambition creates constant tension, and sometimes one comes at the cost of the other.
Every decision matters. And how the team principal leads? That matters even more.
With that context in mind, let’s look at how two very different leaders approach the same high-stakes environment, and what that means for the teams they lead.
Christian Horner: The pressure cooker approach
Christian Horner had been at the helm of Red Bull Racing since 2005. He’s ambitious, media-savvy, and very hungry for winning.
In 2016, he signed Max Verstappen’s at just 17 and has built the team around him since. Verstappen won his debut race with Red Bull in 2016, which was an outstanding result for his age, and set the benchmark for Horner.
“Max is currently the hottest F1 property at the moment” — Christian Horner, Drive to Survive, Season 3
Since then, Max became the central figure at Red Bull, leading him to win 4 Drivers Championships during 2021-2024. Despite that, the team won only 2 Constructors’ Championships in the same timeframe.
Horner’s style: deliver and deal with the pressure, or you’re out. He talks openly about pressure being part of the Red Bull DNA:
“The reality is that, if you can’t cope with the pressure and scrutiny, you’re never going to make it at the highest levels in Formula 1” — Christian Horner, Drive to Survive, Season 3
He’s not wrong, F1 is brutally competitive. But Horner uses that to add gas to the flame and put even more pressure. He tracks mistakes publicly. Questions driver's confidence. Constantly compares everyone to Max. Even a solid P6? Not enough.
The impact of this kind of attitude on the second drivers is, as you might expect, more mistakes, shaken confidence, and disappointing performance.
Why has Red Bull won more drivers’ championships than constructors? The explanation lies in the other seat. Remember, I mentioned you need both drivers scoring points to be competitive as a team.
The problem is Horner is still chasing another one in a generation rockstar like Max. And because he hasn’t found one, he keeps cycling through “second drivers”.
Take Pierre Gasly. Demoted mid-season in 2019 by Horner, he returned to the AlphaTauri team where, with more support and less pressure, he won the 2020 Italian Grand Prix. He beat both Red Bulls that day. Same driver. Different environment. Different results.
Lastly, this year, Liam Lawson was demoted after not performing after only 2 (!!) races and swapped seats with Yuki Tsunoda from the sister team Racing Bulls. Lawson is doing better at Racing Bulls, and Yuki is performing worse at Red Bull. Coincidence much?
Toto Wolff: The people-focused approach
Mercedes, under Toto Wolff, dominated the 2010s. With Lewis Hamilton, they won 7 Drivers’ Championships and 8 Constructors’ Championships between 2014 and 2021.
But Mercedes isn’t #1 right now. Since the 2022 regulation changes, they’ve struggled with car performance.
Still, Wolff leads the same way he always has. He’s not reactive. He plays the long game.
Wolff is a strategist and a culture builder. He invests in people. He looks for potential and then creates the conditions for it to grow.
Wolff’s leadership shows up most in the hard moments. When Hamilton announced he was leaving Mercedes in 2024, Wolff sent him this very heartwarming message:
“Now you’re opening up a new chapter with Ferrari, but it’s most important to remember one thing: find your people. … Because when you find your people, you don’t just beat the world – you change it. - ” — Formula 1 official, from Wolff’s farewell voice message to Lewis Hamilton, December 2024
That’s Toto. He puts people first.
“It’s about hiring and developing the right individuals, forming a culture and a team spirit around them and defining the core objective, and once that is defined, we leave it to each other in our respective fields to deliver on the core objective” – Toto Wolf, YouTube interview
Toto’s leadership style has a very different angle. He believes high performance needs confidence, support, and autonomy, the stuff psychological safety is made of. And it shows.
George Russell joined Mercedes full-time in 2022. From the start, he was treated as a long-term investment. He got coaching, not comparisons. Trust, not threats. He didn’t win his debut race, like Max, but scored his first F1 win within a year, and he kept improving ever since.
And now, all eyes are on Kimi Antonelli, the 17-year-old Mercedes rookie driver being groomed to become the next Hamilton. He’s young, still learning, and clearly not perfect yet. But Toto is backing him fully.
If Kimi were at Red Bull? I wouldn’t be surprised if Horner might have already ruled him out because he’s not at Max’s level. But Wolff sees what could be, not just what is. And that makes a world of a difference.
“Every dream needs a team.” – Mercedes’ slogan
So what does this have to do with Tech?
If high performance were just about skill, every fast driver would win. But that’s not how it works, neither F1 nor Tech. Mindset matters. Environment matters. And most of all, leadership matters.
I’ve worked with plenty of Horner-types and Toto-types in tech. These two leadership styles show up in engineering teams all the time.
The Horner type: high pressure, immediate expectations, and little patience for growth. New hires are expected to deliver like top performers from day one. There’s not much focus on onboarding, team support, or setting people up for success. When things go wrong, the blame falls on the individual. It’s about squeezing out performance, fast.
The Toto type: long-term thinking, strong culture, and a deep belief in helping people succeed. These teams take onboarding seriously. They create clarity, invest in building systems of support, and understand that even the best hires need time to settle in. Performance is earned through trust, not fear.
You might say that these are just different philosophies of leadership. Yes, but with real performance consequences.
If you build a Red Bull-style culture and try to motivate through pressure, you might be setting people up to fail because they don’t feel psychologically safe. Self-doubt creeps in. They get in their own heads. And instead of performing, they freeze.
A single rockstar can’t carry the weight of an entire team, and not everyone starts out as a rockstar. If you only bet on people who shine immediately and overlook those who need time to ramp up, you’re limiting your team’s long-term potential. Some of the strongest performers are the ones who grow into the role, if you give them the chance.
And if you’re troubleshooting performance by repeating that expectations are high, without asking “What’s getting in the way?”, you might be overlooking great talent that simply needs better support.
You don’t get high performance by pushing harder. You get it by creating the conditions where people can do their best work.
So what kind of leader do you want to be: a Horner or a Wolff?
Until next time,
Irina Stanescu
Later edit: Plot twist! Horner got sacked from Red Bull
The news dropped just as I was finishing this article. I didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight, maybe the signs were there. Whatever was happening behind the scenes, one thing is clear: Horner’s leadership created irreparable damage. Even with the highest-paid rockstar driver, the empire didn’t stand behind him.
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Another interesting factor is someone like James Vowles, who came through Mercedes under Toto's leadership and has become a well-respected people-first manager at Williams in his own right. A great example of the finding your people & changing culture Toto talks about!
Reflecting on one's own leadership style and making adjustment is useful, but I find that in any reasonably sized organization, it's helpful to have both types of leaders since both types of "drivers" exist---some engineers really like the high pressure, rockstars only approach to team composition and they will leave the second type of team.