霍纳解释为何禁止红牛动力部门提及梅赛德斯
前红牛CEO兼车队领队克里斯蒂安·霍纳透露，在红牛建造自己的F1引擎期间，他禁止动力总成部门员工提及竞争对手梅赛德斯的名称。
为什么克里斯蒂安·霍纳在红牛建造自己的F1引擎时禁止提及梅赛德斯的名称
克里斯蒂安·霍纳在《The Autosport Interview》节目中解释了为什么他必须阻止提及红牛的竞争对手车队
前红牛CEO兼车队领队克里斯蒂安·霍纳透露，他禁止动力总成部门员工使用死敌梅赛德斯的名称。
这支位于米尔顿凯恩斯的车队在与雷诺动力合作动荡结束后与本田建立了蓬勃发展的合作关系，在2010年代末和2020年代初与这家日本制造商重新成为冠军争夺者，并最终终结了梅赛德斯自2014年V6涡轮混合动力时代开始以来所享有的统治地位，当时马克斯·维斯塔潘在2021年赢得了他的首个车手世界冠军。
但一年前，本田曾宣布将在作为原始设备制造商（OEM）的合同到期后退出F1——而这一年最终成为了这位荷兰人的辉煌之年——随后本田又反悔了这一决定，转而与阿斯顿·马丁合作征战2026赛季，这使得红牛不得不为2022年及以后寻找新的动力供应商。
霍纳和红牛管理层的其他成员选择了大胆的方案，成立了内部的动力总成部门，使自己成为原始设备制造商（OEM），向梅赛德斯、法拉利和雷诺这些老牌动力供应商发起挑战——其中雷诺此后已退出F1赛场。
虽然与本田达成了协议，在2022年至2025年间以RBPT的名义继续合作，但红牛同时与福特合作，从零开始研发符合2026年新规的动力单元，由此在霍纳的带领下展开了一场积极的招募行动。
在接受姊妹刊物《Autosport》的独家采访时，霍纳解释道：“我们与本田达成了一项协议，因为他们正在退出，所以他们在英国的任何员工——都是运营人员和少数与电池相关的人员——都转入了我们的业务中。
但我们需要从零开始。这是一家初创企业。
尽管有来自现有业务以及本田组织的员工迁移，仍有许多空缺需要填补：“我面试了很多来自梅赛德斯的人，试图说服他们加入这个疯狂的新项目，但以我们在底盘上所做的工作作为前提，说‘看，我们已经在底盘上做到了，只要有合适的人，我们也能在引擎上做到’。
当然，你在英国有几家企业——最突出的是[梅赛德斯]HPP，还有考斯沃斯和伊尔莫——但过去25年里，英国国内没有新的引擎企业。
所以你在HPP看到的是一个停滞不前的组织，人们几乎在等待别人腾出位置才能晋升。
“所以，我们说要把这个放在英国——这是一个根本性的决定，因为当时讨论过‘我们是否要和AVL合作，在奥地利做’，把它设在红牛环赛道或其他地方——但在说服股东我们需要在英国之后，我们确定在园区内有一栋曾经是气泡膜工厂的建筑，我们可以对其进行‘小规模更新’，就规划部门所知，这涉及拆除除一根钢柱以外的所有东西，并在55周内建造一座新工厂，同时开始招聘合适的人。”
这些‘合适的人’包括从梅赛德斯挖来的多位关键成员，由托托·沃尔夫领导。霍纳和沃尔夫之间曾有过多次尖刻的交锋，当时维斯塔潘正与刘易斯·汉密尔顿争夺车手冠军，这种竞争一直延续到红牛在F1地面效应时代初期的统治时期。
“那（招聘）是一个我们在人才上展开拉锯战的过程，我当时在积极招聘——本·霍奇金森（RBPT技术总监，曾任梅赛德斯HPP高级动力单元工程师）是早期的重要招聘，皮普·克洛德（RBPT能量回收机械设计主管，曾任梅赛德斯HPP F1动力单元概念团队负责人）负责涡轮增压器过来，菲尔·普雷（RBPT工程总监，曾任梅赛德斯HPP首席工程师）也过来了。我们从HPP吸引到了如此多有才华的人。
“然后，当然，还要给业务内部那些可能想迈出一步进入组织其他部分的人机会，所以这给了人才尝试不同事物的机会。
本·霍奇金森，红牛动力总成技术总监
“有些部门会同时受到两者影响，比如电子部门必须在一夜之间扩充，以同时支持底盘和引擎，而他们此前从未生产过引擎线束。所以那是一个非常动态的时期。
“我们招到了一些非常出色的人，比如来自梅赛德斯的史蒂夫·布罗迪（红牛动力总成内燃机运营负责人，此前在梅赛德斯担任HPP F1赛道现场及最终检查经理），他们带着对这个项目的巨大能量和热情加入，那真是一段令人兴奋的时光。有很多疑问，甚至内部也有，因为本田造出的引擎让我们有能力与梅赛德斯正面争夺世界冠军。”
但随着人员和知识的涌入，也出现了‘我们以前是怎么做的’这类讨论，而霍纳急于杜绝这种现象。
在推动这个实体启动的过程中，组织内部有着极佳的氛围，当然，你还要欢迎来自对立面、也就是敌人的人。
所以有太多人谈论‘好吧，在梅赛德斯我们这样做，在梅赛德斯我们那样做’，所以最后这在会议上被禁止了——我们不会提梅赛德斯；它变成了‘B队’。
你可以在这里观看对克里斯蒂安·霍纳的《Autosport访谈》完整版。
英文原文
Why Christian Horner banned Mercedes' name as Red Bull built its own F1 engine
Christian Horner explains why he had to stop mentions of Red Bull's rival team in 'The Autosport Interview'
Former Red Bull CEO and team principal Christian Horner has revealed why he banned employees of the squad's powertrains division from using the name of bitter Formula 1 rivals Mercedes.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit had enjoyed a flourishing partnership with Honda following a turbulent end to its time working with Renault power, re-emerging as a title contender in the late 2010s and early 2020s with the Japanese manufacturer and ultimately bringing an end to the dominance enjoyed by Mercedes since the dawn of the V6 turbo-hybrid era in 2014, when Max Verstappen secured his maiden drivers' world championship in 2021.
But a year earlier, Honda had announced its departure from F1 as an OEM at the end of what would turn out to be the Dutchman's year of glory - a decision it would renege on to link up with Aston Martin for 2026 - leaving Red Bull seeking a new power provider for 2022 and beyond.
Horner and the rest of the Red Bull hierarchy took the bold option, creating an in-house powertrains department to become its own OEM, taking the fight to established power suppliers Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault - the latter of which has since left the grid.
And while a deal was struck with Honda to continue the partnership between 2022 and 2025 under the RBPT moniker, Red Bull partnered with Ford to start developing the power unit needed to comply with the new-for-2026 regulations from scratch, leading to an aggressive recruitment drive led by Horner.
In an exclusive interview with sister publication Autosport, Horner explained: "We did a deal with Honda, because they were pulling out, that any of their staff in the UK, which were all operational staff and a few battery-related people, came across into the business.
"But we needed to start from scratch. It was a startup."
Despite a migration of staff from the existing business as well as from Honda's organisation, many gaps still needed filling: "I was interviewing a lot of people from Mercedes, trying to convince them to come across to this crazy new project but using what we had done on the chassis as a prerequisite to say 'look, we've done it on a chassis, we can do it on an engine with the right people'.
"And of course, you've got several businesses in the UK - the most prevalent being [Mercedes] HPP, and you've got Cosworth and you've got Ilmor - but there were no new engine businesses within the UK for the last 25 years.
"So what you had at HPP was a sort of stagnant organisation that people were almost waiting for dead men's shoes to be able to progress.
"So by saying we're going to put this in the UK - which was a fundamental decision because there was a discussion of 'do we partner with AVL and do it in Austria', base it at the circuit in the Red Bull Ring or whatever - but having convinced the shareholders that we need to be in the UK, identifying we had the space within the campus in a building that used to be a bubblewrap factory that we were able to do a 'minor update' to, as far as the planners were aware, which involved taking everything down apart from one steel, and build a new factory within 55 weeks and start recruiting the right people."
The 'right people' included the poaching of a number of key members from Mercedes, led by Toto Wolff. Horner and Wolff had a number of vitriolic tête-à-têtes with each other while Verstappen duked it out with Lewis Hamilton for the drivers' title, with that rivalry carrying through to Red Bull's dominance in the early years of F1's ground-effect era.
"That [the recruitment] was a process where we were getting into a tug of love over talent, and I was aggressively recruiting - Ben Hodgkinson [RBPT technical director, formerly Mercedes HPP senior power unit engineer] was a key recruitment in the early days, Pip Clode [RBPT head of mechanical design for energy recovery, formerly Mercedes HPP F1 power unit concept team leader] on the turbo coming across, Phil Prew [RBPT engineering director, formerly Mercedes HPP chief engineer] coming across. There were so many talented people we managed to attract out of HPP.
"And then, of course, giving people the opportunity from within the business that perhaps wanted to make that step into other parts of the organisation, so it gave an opportunity for talent to try something different.
Ben Hodgkinson, Red Bull Powertrains Technical Director
"You had departments that were going to be affected by both, so for example, electronics had to grow overnight to accommodate both chassis and engine and hadn't produced engine wiring looms before. So it was a really dynamic period.
"We employed some really great characters, like Steve Brodie [RBPT leader of combustion engine operations] from Mercedes [where he was HPP F1 trackside and final inspection manager], and they just came with such energy and passion for the project, it was a really exciting time. There were a lot of questions, even internally, because Honda had produced an engine that was giving us the ability to fight for world championships toe-to-toe with Mercedes."
But with that influx of personnel and knowledge came talk of 'what we used to do', something that Horner was keen to stamp out.
"There was a tremendous atmosphere within the organisation of getting this entity going and, of course, you're welcoming people from the opposition, the enemy.
"So there was too much talk of 'well, at Mercedes we did this and at Mercedes we did that,' so in the end it got banned from meetings - we aren't going to mention Mercedes; it became 'Team B'."
You can watch 'The Autosport Interview' with Christian Horner in its entirety here.
Motorsport.com ·
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