Red Bull F1 Boss Refuses to Promote Pierre Gasly Just Out of Emotion, Lays Out Reason for Snub

Look, if you watched Drive to Survive season 4, you probably got pretty emotional about Pierre Gasly’s whole redemption arc thing. The guy wins at Monza in 2020 – first victory for Toro Rosso since Vettel back in ’08 – and you’re sitting there thinking, okay, surely Red Bull’s gotta bring him back now.

Yeah. About that.

Christian Horner basically just poured cold water on the whole thing, and honestly? I get it. Even if I dont like it.

“Pierre has shown some good races this year, but he’s also shown some dips as well,” Horner said. And here’s the part that probably stung the most: “He wouldn’t have had the chance in F1 without Red Bull. If you can’t cope with the pressure and scrutiny, you’re never going to make it at the highest level in F1.”

I mean. Ouch.

But Horner wasnt done. “Helmut [Marko] and I looked at the information. It is not based on emotion, it is based on facts. From a team point of view, there is no one pushing internally to say we have got to have Pierre back.”

No one pushing internally. That’s the killer right there.

The thing people forget is that when Gasly got the call from Helmut Marko at 8:42 AM telling him he was demoted, it came as a complete shock. He’d been told he had the seat for the whole year. Twelve races into 2019, and suddenly he’s back at the junior team.

Gasly has said he still wants answers from Marko about what really happened. “It wasn’t really fair but anyway, that’s the way it was,” he told the Beyond the Grid podcast. “I’ve learned as well that the sport is not always fair.”

But here’s what nobody talks about – once he went back to Toro Rosso, he was immediately fast again. Like, properly fast. The pressure differential between driving for Red Bull proper versus the junior team… it’s real, man. And look, athlete compensation in motorsport has gone absolutely insane, but that doesnt mean the pressure is any easier to handle.

Marko’s assessment was pretty brutal: “Gasly has problems in traffic, he loses places and he can’t overtake.” The 118-point deficit to Verstappen in just 13 races… that’s not something you can spin positively.

The reality is, Red Bulls whole junior program is built on one thing: can you match Max? And right now, nobody can. Maybe Gasly thrives at a team where hes the clear number one.

But at Red Bull? The data said no. And Christian Horners not about to run a charity.