If he were able to choose it, Helmut Marko would appoint Sebastian Vettel as his successor to Red Bull: “That would be the ideal candidate for successors,” said the Austrian recently about the German, but one who cannot imagine it at all, ex-pilot Juan Pablo Montoya.
“I would be surprised if Vettel really wanted to replace him,” the Colombian told Spin Genie. Because the German had ended his active career after the 2022 season in order to be able to spend more time with his family and to devote himself to other heart projects.
Montoya does not see that he would therefore come back to the Formula 1 circus again full-time: “Spending his entire time in Formula 1 without racing myself seems crazy to me,” he says.
Vettel himself meant the successor to Markos: “I think there is only a helmut, and the role of Helmut is his.” But the German did not want to explicitly excluded it: “You will see whether this is in the future,” he said.
With the four-time world champion, at least one fresh wind would come to the Red Bull Academy, which is sometimes considered very hard. “Vettel would be much fairer, and that would change the development of the Red Bull young drivers,” believes Montoya, whose son Sebastian himself belonged to the Red Bull Academy-but was sorted out again after only one season.
Do media do more from Red Bull problems?
Perhaps Vettel may not feel like the difficult environment at Red Bull. He knows the team from many years of experience, but since then there have been ten years – even if the same responsible persons still have the way in the team.
“There is always a power struggle at Red Bull,” says Montoya, but does not see the problem as big as it is made from the outside: “I think the impression of evil blood in the Red Bull team comes from the media more than from the actual feeling within the team,” says the Colombian and looks particularly at the “merciless” British media.
“When you see how Christian Horner interacts with the team and how he expresses himself in front of the camera, everything works fine. If you only read the media, you get the impression that there are big problems in the team.” Only those involved in the team themselves know how it really is.
“The situation has calmed down at the moment,” says Montoya, who knows exactly: “That can quickly get a lot of attention again.”