Red Bull had the chance to sign Lewis Hamilton in 2012 and walked away. The reasons, according to Christian Horner’s new autobiography, were the price Hamilton’s camp wanted and the resistance from inside the Red Bull hierarchy to disturbing a championship-winning line-up built around Sebastian Vettel.
Horner tells the story in Drive, published this week ahead of the United States Grand Prix. The former Red Bull team principal describes a phone call from Hamilton’s father, Anthony, that led to a private sit-down at Adrian Newey’s home near Ascot. The chief designer, Hamilton and Horner were in the room.
“What will it take to join you guys?”
Hamilton did not dance around the subject.
“‘What will it take to join you guys?’ he said, as we sat down,” Horner writes in an extract published by GPBlog.
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“Adrian, who is not known for his poker face, looked ecstatic.”
By then the 2008 world champion had grown restless at McLaren, where mechanical failures were costing him results. Horner recalls the impression Hamilton made in the paddock that year.
“Lewis Hamilton seemed to be losing heart at McLaren. From the outside, his relationship with Jenson Button looked strained, and his head was dropping after a series of mechanical failures throughout 2012,” Horner writes, according to GiveMeSport.
Marko unimpressed, Mateschitz unconvinced
The problems started as soon as Horner took the proposal back to Red Bull. Helmut Marko, the Austrian who ran the junior program that had produced Vettel, was not interested.
“Certainly, Helmut looked unimpressed when he heard the news,” Horner writes.
Red Bull co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz was also against replacing Mark Webber with Hamilton as Vettel’s teammate for 2013, Sky Sports reports from the book. Horner sums up the internal thinking in one line.
“We had a winning driver in Seb, did we really need to upset the apple cart?”
The money finished it off. Hamilton’s manager Simon Fuller opened the negotiation at a different altitude.
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“‘You and I can do the biggest sports deal since Muhammad Ali,’ he said boldly,” Horner recalls.
“I laughed, having grown familiar with the sports-agent vernacular. Simon was going to make a lot of money. And Red Bull would have to spend a fortune.”
Horner nudged Lauda toward Hamilton
If Red Bull was out, Horner says he was happy to point a rival in. He claims he actively steered Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda toward Hamilton, asking the Austrian a direct question.
“Why don’t you go for Lews, who was inevitably becoming frustrated at McLaren?”
Hamilton signed for Mercedes for 2013. The partnership delivered six drivers’ titles and 84 race wins.
Marko: “a collection of untruths”
Not every claim in Drive has gone unchallenged. Marko, who left Horner outside the Red Bull tent in 2012, has already dismissed the book publicly.
“The book is a collection of untruths, which I do not want to discuss in detail,” Marko said, according to TheJudge13.
Horner, who was dismissed by Red Bull in July 2025, releases Drive on Thursday, 22 October 2026.
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