McLaren chief Zak Brown is enthusiastic about the prospect of his former rival Christian Horner returning to Formula 1. Certainly more so than Toto Wolff, Horner's original nemesis, who recently described the former Red Bull chief as "the bad" of F1 and feels he has "broken a lot of glass" which would need to be fixed before anyone in the sport could work with him.

Horner enjoyed remarkable success over 20 years in charge of Red Bull, including eight drivers' championship wins and six more constructors' crowns. But it all came to an abrupt end last July when, after the British Grand Prix, the news broke that he had been relived of his roles as team principal and chief executive of the racing team.

It became very quickly clear that Horner felt he was not done with F1 and he spent much time over the rest of 2025 meeting with potential investors. It emerged he was targeting a 24 percent stake in the Alpine team which is up for sale, though his planned route back into the sport has been complicated somewhat by other interested parties, including Mercedes Grand Prix.

Wolff insisted he is not showing interest in buying into Alpine just to stop his old rival, but did suggest he would prefer not to go up against Horner in the F1 paddock again. " He has broken quite a lot of glass and these things have repercussions in our microcosm," the Austrian told the Press Association. "But that is what he has done all his life, and that is what he knows best.

Wolff later added: "I am in two minds about [Horner returning to F1]. The sport is missing personalities. And his personality was clearly very controversial and that is good for the sport. I said to [Ferrari team principal] Fred Vasseur that it needs 'the good, the bad, and the ugly'. And it is now only the good and the ugly left. The bad is gone.

"Would I consider that he could ever be an ally or someone that shares objectives? I don't think so. If there wasn't that competitive rivalry over so many years, and if there was more water down the river, I am sure I could have had hung with him over dinner and a had a laugh. But over those years it was just too intense, too fierce, and things happened which even today I cannot comprehend why he has done them."

Asked for his take on potentially sparring again with Horner in the future, Brown sounded much more open to the idea and echoed Wolff's point about F1 benefitting from having strong personalities in the paddock. He said: "Christian was a great personality for the sport. Sport always has great personalities. They come and go. I think it'd be great to have Christian back in the sport.

"He's a great operator. His track record speaks for itself. I'd rather have 10 weak team principals, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. And there's huge talent that's coming up all the time. There's been a lot of team principal moves here in the last two to three years.

"I think it'd be great to have him back in the sport and I'm sure, given his passion for the sport and his age, I'd be shocked if he wasn't back in the sport, whether it was with Alpine or or someone else."