On the Tuesday before the Dutch Grand Prix, Christian Horner gave a speech to the staff of the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes. Half the team was not being sold to Porsche, despite the widely-reported commercial papers Porsche had lodged to that effect. Red Bull would remain an independent team, Horner emphasised. Porsche had only been offered a deal with Red Bull Powertrains (the engine manufacturing company set up by Red Bull, which recently made the fire-up of its first prototype) which would have placed the German manufacturer’s name on the Red Bull power unit, together with the input of around 20 Porsche engineers. But that was all there was.
Porsche’s earlier talks with Red Bull’s soft drink magnate, 78-year-old Dietrich Mateschitz, had been based around Porsche buying 50% of the whole team (which is currently 49% owned by Mateschitz and 51% by the Thai Yoovidhya family). But any previous discussions had just been preliminary, Horner emphasised.
Whether those discussions encompassed the future roles of Horner and Helmut Marko, or indeed technical chief Adrian Newey, is unknown by at this time. But there were already rumours that Porsche wanted to draft-in current McLaren (and ex-Porsche) team principal Andreas Seidl to run the team. But once Horner and Marko had held discussions with the Yoovidhyas,
