The $1 Team

0:00 Twenty years in charge, no ownership

On the ninth of July 2025, the man who had run Red Bull's Formula One team for twenty years was released from his operational duties. With immediate effect. No reason was given.

This October, the accounts of the team's parent company showed nearly sixty-seven million pounds in compensation for loss of office, paid to its highest-paid director. The director is not named. Press reports say he is believed to be Christian Horner.

In 2025, the team Horner had run was valued at more than four billion dollars. He never owned any of it.

This ledger will show who built it, and who keeps it.

In November 2004, Ford had sold that same team for a reported one dollar.

0:48 From $1 to $4.32 billion

That is not a typo. The bar on the left is one dollar.

The bars on the right come from Sportico, which puts a value on every Formula One team each year. In 2023, Red Bull Racing was worth two point four billion dollars. In 2024, three and a half billion. In 2025, four point three two billion. Forbes, counting in its own way, lands on almost exactly the same number.

Between the first bar and the last, a team was built. Eight drivers' championships. Six constructors' titles. An engine programme of its own, in Milton Keynes. And one man in charge for twenty years.

But a valuation is a number on paper. It says what a thing is worth. It does not say who it belongs to.

So this episode follows the paperwork. A company register in England. Another one in Austria. A trust company in Geneva. And a book that was published this October.

One question runs through all of it. Who built the value of Red Bull Racing, and who got to keep it?

To answer it, this episode keeps a ledger. One column for who built the value, and one for who got to keep it.

2:33 The energy drink that bought a team

In September 2004, Ford made an announcement. Its Formula One team, racing under the Jaguar name, was for sale. So was Cosworth, its engine company.

Ford's vice-president Richard Parry-Jones said it had become too expensive to be successful in Formula One, and that the sport's money was not shared fairly. Jaguar's chairman, Joe Greenwell, said Ford could no longer make a compelling business case for staying.

It was part of a larger clean-up. Ford's Jaguar car business was losing money, and the same restructuring cut more than a thousand jobs in Coventry.

The English company register still shows where this team came from. One company, number zero three one two zero six four five. It was founded in 1995 as Stewart Grand Prix. In January 2000, under Ford, it became Jaguar Racing. Same factory, same people, a new name on the door.

By late 2004, the team was costing Ford about two million dollars a week, Reuters reported. Ford, Autosport reported, was looking for a token amount from a buyer who would take over the running costs.

Ford did not need a buyer who could pay a price. It needed a buyer who could pay the bills.

The ledger starts before Red Bull. The first entry on the building side is Ford, which paid to keep the team running.

The deadline was the fifteenth of November, the last day to enter a team for the 2005 season. The weekend before, Dietrich Mateschitz, the Austrian who had turned a Thai energy tonic into Red Bull, told his local paper in Salzburg that he had bought Jaguar Racing. On Monday the fifteenth, Ford confirmed it.

So what did he pay? The honest answer is that nobody outside the deal knows. The terms were never published.

At the time, Autosport reported a purely nominal fee. The BBC reported that Ford had asked for a symbolic one dollar. Red Bull itself tells the story under the title From a dollar to a dynasty. And the publisher of Christian Horner's new book says the team was acquired for one pound.

Even the price depends on who tells it.

What the sources do agree on is the real price. Ford wanted proof that the buyer would invest. More than two hundred million pounds over three years, Autosport wrote. Four hundred million dollars, according to the BBC. Most likely the same promise, in two currencies.

The dollar bought the team. The promise bought Ford's peace of mind.

The paperwork was ready before the deal was public. On the ninth of November, six days before Ford's confirmation, a shelf company in England called Mutanderis four nine three Limited changed its name to Red Bull Racing Holdings. A week later, the team itself became Red Bull Racing Limited. Today that holding company is called Red Bull Technology, and it owns at least three quarters of the team.

A year later, Red Bull bought a second team. In September 2005 it took over Minardi for a price reported at around thirty-five million dollars and never confirmed. Minardi became Toro Rosso. Today it is called Racing Bulls.

Two teams, one owner. And at the top of the first one, a new man.

Now both columns get an entry. Red Bull's money bought the team for a reported one dollar and a promise to invest, and the team belongs to Red Bull.

6:24 The man in the chair

On the seventh of January 2005, Red Bull removed the team's management and put a thirty-one-year-old in charge. Christian Horner had run his own team in the junior categories. He had never run a Formula One team. Officially, his title was sporting director. Everyone called him the team principal.

His first season went better than Jaguar's last. Seventh in the constructors' championship, with thirty-four points. Jaguar had scored ten the year before.

In November 2005, Red Bull announced a new signing. Adrian Newey, the designer behind championship-winning cars at Williams and McLaren, would become its chief technical officer. He started in January 2006.

It took three more years. On the nineteenth of April 2009, Sebastian Vettel won the Chinese Grand Prix, with Mark Webber second. Red Bull's first win.

What followed was the most successful period in the team's history. Four drivers' championships for Vettel, from 2010 to 2013, and four constructors' titles in the same years. Then, after a long wait, four drivers' titles for Max Verstappen, from 2021 to 2024, and two more constructors' titles, in 2022 and 2023.

Eight and six.

Between those two eras sat seven lean years. In 2014, Formula One switched to hybrid engines, and Red Bull did not build its own. Mercedes did, and won every constructors' title from 2014 to 2021. Red Bull learned what it means to depend on someone else's engine.

So when Honda, its engine partner since 2019, announced in 2020 that it would leave the sport, Red Bull decided to build engines itself, in Milton Keynes. In February 2023, at the launch of its new car in New York, it announced a partner for that project.

Ford.

The company that had sold the team for a dollar was back. Not as an owner. As a partner.

On the building side of the ledger, a name: Christian Horner. Under him, the team won eight drivers' titles and six constructors' titles.

All of this had to be paid for. And the way it was paid tells you what the team was for.

In 2009, the year of that first win, the accounts in England show where the money came from. Red Bull GmbH, the drinks company in Austria, put one hundred and seven million pounds into Red Bull Technology, the team's parent company in England. Ninety-seven million of that went to Red Bull Racing itself. The team's own profit that year was about seven hundred thousand pounds.

On those numbers, the team was not built to make money. It was built to make a can of energy drink famous, and the can paid for it.

A budget cap arrived in 2021 and limited what any team could spend. By 2025, Red Bull Racing Limited reported a turnover of three hundred and eighty million pounds, and a profit after tax of nine point four million.

And the value of the team went from one dollar to billions.

The man in the chair watched all of that from very close. In 2012, by his own account in his new book, Niki Lauda offered him the chance to run Mercedes. He said no, out of loyalty to Dietrich Mateschitz.

But loyalty is not ownership. Horner was paid well. Very well. For 2024, the team's accounts show seven million pounds for its highest-paid director, understood to be Horner. He did not own the team. Writing in The Race this month, Darren Cox called him a very highly paid employee.

The value belonged to someone else. To see who, you have to leave Milton Keynes, and go to a lake in the Austrian Alps.

In the ledger, next to Horner's name: twenty years in charge, and very well paid. But no ownership.

10:49 Two families, one company

Red Bull GmbH has its headquarters in Fuschl am See, near Salzburg. In the Austrian company register it is number five six two four seven T. The register lists three shareholders. Two of them have been there since 1997.

When an Austrian marketer and a Thai businessman launched Red Bull in the 1980s, Bloomberg wrote, they chose a simple structure. Forty-nine percent each.

The Austrian was Dietrich Mateschitz. His shares sit in Distribution and Marketing GmbH, his company. The Thai businessman was Chaleo Yoovidhya, whose energy drink Mateschitz had adapted for the West. His family's shares sit in TC Agro Trading, registered in Hong Kong.

That leaves two percent. They were held by Chalerm Yoovidhya, Chaleo's son, in his own name. The Austrian register shows them in his name from 1997. Bloomberg says he held the stake for around four decades.

Forty-nine, forty-nine, two. On paper, the Thai side held fifty-one percent. A majority.

On the keeping side, the owners of Red Bull GmbH. Mateschitz, the Yoovidhya family, and Chalerm Yoovidhya with his two percent.

Dietrich Mateschitz died on the twenty-second of October 2022. He was seventy-eight. His forty-nine percent went to his son, Mark, who took no operational role. Three managers took over the company. Franz Watzlawick for the drinks business. Alexander Kirchmayr for the finances. And Oliver Mintzlaff for projects and investments. Sport, and Formula One, fell under Mintzlaff.

For the team in Milton Keynes, that meant a new boss in Austria. And, as the next two years would show, a contest for influence.

In early 2024, an internal complaint against Horner was investigated on behalf of Red Bull GmbH by an independent barrister, and dismissed. An appeal was dismissed later that year. Horner denied the allegations throughout.

In those weeks, Chalerm Yoovidhya flew to the season opener in Bahrain. The Telegraph called it a public show of support. On the other side stood Jos Verstappen, the father of the champion, who told the Daily Mail that the team would explode if Horner stayed.

Helmut Marko, Red Bull's long-time adviser, later put it more bluntly. Speaking to a Dutch newspaper in December 2025, as quoted in English by ESPN, he said that basically, the power was always in Austria.

The English register adds a quiet detail. At Red Bull Technology, the company that owns the team, one person is listed with significant control. Mark Mateschitz, with between twenty-five and fifty percent of the shares, and the right to appoint the directors. Nobody from the Yoovidhya family is listed there. The register does not say why, and this channel draws no conclusion from it.

Two families. One company. And two percent in between.

In the ledger, one name changes. The forty-nine percent of Dietrich Mateschitz went to his son, Mark.

14:21 The 2%

On the twentieth of May 2025, Chalerm Yoovidhya signed his two percent over to a company in Geneva. Fides Trustees SA, a trust company that, by its own description, serves wealthy families. Red Bull's three managing directors co-signed. On the thirty-first of May, the transfer was entered in the register.

Bloomberg estimated those two percent at about one point one billion dollars. In the register itself, the stake is written down as ten thousand Austrian schillings. At the rate Austria used when it switched to the euro, that is about seven hundred and thirty euros.

No price was disclosed. The filing did not say why the shares were moved, or for whom.

Red Bull's spokesperson said arrangements like this are common in large companies, to ensure continuity. Fides did not immediately respond.

The register shows the trustee. It does not show who the trustee works for.

Journalists have tried to find out. Motorsport.com found indications that Fides manages the shares on behalf of the Yoovidhya family, without official confirmation, and suggested that the balance of power had not really changed. Others count it differently. Some still write that the Thai family holds fifty-one percent. Bloomberg describes Fides as a minority shareholder.

Now put the dates next to each other.

The transfer was signed on the twentieth of May. It was registered on the thirty-first. On the ninth of July, fifty days after the signature, Red Bull GmbH released Christian Horner from his operational duties, with immediate effect. Laurent Mekies took over. No reason was given.

No document connects the two. ESPN, citing sources, reported that Chalerm Yoovidhya's position on Horner had changed in the months before, and named Oliver Mintzlaff as a key figure in the decision.

What can be shown is the timing. And the cost.

On the twenty-second of September 2025, Horner formally left. His contract ran until 2030. The accounts filed this October show what ending it cost.

In the group accounts of Red Bull Technology, the highest-paid director received nearly sixty-seven million pounds in compensation for loss of office, on top of nine million in pay. The director is not named. Press reports say he is believed to be Horner.

You may have seen a figure of one hundred million on social media. That comes from adding the team's own accounts to the group's. But the group already includes the team. Counted once, it is sixty-seven million.

Twenty years of work. One payment. And no ownership.

The two percent now sits with a trustee in Geneva. The accounts show nearly sixty-seven million pounds for an unnamed director, believed to be Horner.

17:31 What it means now

This October, Christian Horner published his version. The book is called Drive. It came out on the twenty-second of October 2026. Four years to the day after Dietrich Mateschitz died.

In it, he describes his last day. Marko and Mintzlaff were waiting for him, he writes, and Marko told him it was all about the can. On stage in New York the same week, he called his exit pretty abrupt and quite brutal.

Helmut Marko, who left Red Bull at the end of 2025, answered in the German-language press. The book, he said, in the English translation, is a collection of untruths.

Two stories. One team. This channel does not decide who is right. The paperwork does not need to.

Because the paperwork shows what happened next.

In October 2026, Red Bull's own engine won its first Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen. It was the project Horner set up after Honda announced it would leave the sport. Red Bull called him to say thank you. It was, Horner said, quite a different call than the one he had received fifteen months earlier.

A week before the book came out, the team extended the contract of Laurent Mekies until 2031. The announcement carried a joint statement from the two main shareholders. Chalerm Yoovidhya and Mark Mateschitz.

And the drinks company paid its owners. This October, the Austrian business magazine Trend and Bloomberg reported a payout of more than one billion euros in dividends. Five hundred and thirty-three million to Mark Mateschitz. The same to the Yoovidhya family. And to the two percent in Geneva, two percent of that total: about twenty-two million euros. In one year.

The team itself is no longer the obvious winner. In 2025, McLaren took the drivers' title, and in Sportico's ranking McLaren's value passed Red Bull's. The second team tells a different story. The team that was Minardi, bought for a reported thirty-five million dollars, was valued by Sportico at about two billion in 2025. This summer, according to The Times, Red Bull turned down an offer of up to three billion dollars for it.

Christian Horner, meanwhile, has been looking for a way back in. This year, Alpine confirmed that he was part of a group of investors interested in a stake in the team. The Race reported talks with the Chinese carmaker BYD about a new team; BYD said there was no such project. He told The Guardian in October that he has accumulated some phenomenal capital, and that his next move would come with ownership attached.

In 2025, Red Bull Racing was valued at more than four billion dollars. It still belongs to two families, with two percent held by a trustee in Geneva. The man who ran it for twenty years left with a payment, and a story to tell.

The ledger is full now. Ford's bills, Red Bull's money and twenty years of work on one side, and the shares on the other.

20:57 Sources and next episode

Building a team makes you valuable. Owning one makes you rich.

Every number in this episode has a source, and you will find them all below the video.

Next time: what Cadillac paid to get into Formula One, and which teams got the money. That episode is called The Ticket.