F1 – Horner Leaks: the mud machine in action with chat and email

The Horner-Leaks breaks out in Bahrain

4.16pmFP2 of the Bahrain Grand Prix underway. Christian Horner is at the Red Bull wall, after having received confirmation from the company's top management and having emerged unscathed from the internal investigation into alleged inappropriate behavior by an employee.
An email notification lights up your cell phones and computers over 100 paddock characters of Formula 1. The sender febtwentyninth@*.com just sent a link to a 170 MB Google Drive with 79 archived files, along with a short accompanying message: “Following Red Bull's recent investigations and statements, you will be interested in viewing the attached materials.”

The confidential addresses of the recipients

Anonymous sender, veracity of content impossible to verify. Someone is willing to do anything to undermine Christian Horner's credibility and discredit his public image. Ruthlessly exposing a married man and father of two children to public ridicule. The Horner-Leaks is served.
Whoever acted had confidential email addresses availableas well as the list of 134 journalists with permanent passes for the 2024 Formula 1 world championship. A sign that this is someone well connected to the environment. Inside we also find the other 9 team principals, 7 prominent motorsport personalities – including Mohammed Ben Sulayem president of the FIA ​​and Greg Maffei head of Liberty Media. The email to Stefano Domenicali, F1 president, did not reach its destination, as suggested by La Gazzetta dello Sport: the address entered would have been incorrect. Finally, Jos Verstappen is also on the list. A move, the latter, which did not go unnoticed.
Horner does not comment specifically and reiterates that he has always denied the accusations, his lawyers warn the media from disseminating the contents of the archive.

Helmut Marko's reaction

Reached by Bild, Helmut Marko he seemed shocked by what happened: “I hadn't even noticed. I am stunned and surprised that the documents were leaked. I myself have never seen them“, underlined the Red Bull consultant. The former driver from Graz was therefore keen to underline that he had not had access to the final report on the internal investigation and that he had never read the evidence collected.

And now?

Many people – FIA, F1, Ford – had asked the question transparency to Red Bull. One of the sites that launched the scandal, that is F1-Insiderobserved: “Transparency now exists, thanks to the anonymous email. Now the Horner case enters its next phase.”
Another newspaper that was very exposed in the affair, Motorsport-Totalexplained that this violation of privacy could bring the news back into the news Red Bull Group Global Code of Business Conduct. If this document – which is not public – were to explicitly prohibit relationships between superiors and employees, Horner would once again be in trouble.
But it is difficult to believe that the code was not examined during the internal investigation.
Finally, the journalist Christian Nimmervoll whispered: “It is possible that what happened on Thursday is not the last gasp of the story. In Bahrain there are rumors of other files that have not yet been leaked…“.
There mud machine it's already gone.