Before the start of the winter tests in Bahrain, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff commented for the first time on the boos directed at Christian Horner at the F1 launch
The booing of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner remains one of the big topics in the Formula One paddock a week after the event in London. On Tuesday, the paddock in Bahrain, where the official winter tests start on Wednesday, slowly began to fill up. One of the first people to step in front of the cameras was Toto Wolff.
The Mercedes team principal was asked by Sky reporter Craig Slater about the booing of Horner. According to Slater, Max Verstappen was “not directly booed”, but “I heard a lot of cheers for him. Christian Horner, on the other hand, was definitely booed, and even the FIA president commented on it.”
When asked whether the fans should be allowed to react in this way or not, Wolff replied in the interview: “I think, as you say, that Max was not really booed. And we shouldn’t talk down a great event just because a single person – whether rightly or wrongly – was booed when they spoke.”
But Slater did not let up at this point and wanted Wolff to know whether he himself had booed or not. The latter responded with a twinkle in his eye to the not-so-serious question: “No, that wasn’t necessary – after all, there were 15,000 others who did it.”
Toto reacts to last week at the O2 pic.twitter.com/YlzypqtsTT
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) February 25, 2025
In the wake of the Horner affair, which kept Formula 1 in suspense about a year ago and almost led to the implosion of the Red Bull team, Wolff was one of the harshest critics of the Red Bull team boss, who was accused of sexual harassment by a former assistant. However, Horner was later exonerated by an internal Red Bull investigation.
One thing is certain for Wolff: the F1 launch was “a fantastic event”, and even the boos cannot change that. He says: “The audience was great, the presentation of the cars was successful, and it has set a new format for the future. That’s exactly what we should take from this event.”
