Chapter 467: RedBull’s Dilemma II

"Billions? And our legal department agreed to it during the due diligence? Are you crazy?" Mateschitz said with an expression of pure disbelief and anger at the foolishness of the people in the legal department.

From his expression alone, it was obvious that he was already thinking of replacing all of them in a single go for making such a foolish and costly mistake, and might even go as far as suing them for deliberately signing contracts in the company’s name that had unpayable penalties.

"They let it happen because no one believed he could win two races or have four podiums in AlphaTauri, considering they had only two wins in their history and four podiums. It was deemed an insurmountable condition, and one they agreed to because it was one of the conditions we had to grant them if we were to keep him in the team."

"....." Mateschitz was silent for a moment as he tried to calm himself down due to his health, but the veins on his forehead made it clear that he was failing spectacularly at that.

After a few seconds, he said in a low voice, as if he were talking to himself, "Should I have known that the hands-off operations style I allowed the team to operate under would result in them deviating from the original culture?" as if he were wondering where things had gone wrong.

"Dietrich..." Horner called as he tried to say something because just hearing those words, he knew something bad was definitely coming.

But Dietrich interrupted Horner by raising his hand while still rubbing his temples with the other, before raising his head, looking at Horner on the other end of the table, and saying, "Ruthless efficiency and performance-driven.

I believe that was our operating ethos, but it seems like both you and the Verstappens have forgotten that in the chase of more benefits for yourselves, having benefited from that same system," having immediately caught on that the chase for the championship being the reason might be true, but it was not the only reason.

He could immediately pinpoint who was on that same side by just looking at who would be benefiting from Fatih remaining in AlphaTauri for the remainder of the year.

"Is Helmut not up to the task in this matter? I believe he was representing me there, or am I misunderstanding something? Because having watched all the races this season, and barring Verstappen and Hamilton, I don’t think anyone else could match the performance he has shown in those races.

And here I was, wondering if you were delaying going ahead with the promotion for some specific and important reasons, and it’s because you are worried he will steal points from Max? Doesn’t Max always find himself in a two-against-one situation constantly because Perez can’t match the same role that Bottas does well?

5th in Bahrain, 11th in Imola, 4th in Portugal, 5th in Spain and Monaco, 2nd in Baku, and 5th in Paul Ricard, and in all of these he beat Bottas only three times, and two of those were because Bottas DNF’d.

You might argue that he is still getting to know the car as he is driving it for the first year, and changing drivers midway would take the same learning time, but that doesn’t make sense in the current situation because, on the other side, you have a driver who had a Grand Slam in his first-ever F1 race weekend, driving the car for the first time that week, beat Perez in Azerbaijan to win it, and fought Max and Hamilton for three whole laps to go on to win in the French GP. In contrast, the other driver finished fifth as he was overtaken in the championship by a driver with only three races.

And you are trying to oust the performer in a bid to protect the worries of the Verstappens? When did we become that kind of team?" BAM!!! He hit the table with the hand that was rubbing his temples because it wasn’t working at all in alleviating the pain he felt in them.

The more he talked, the angrier he sounded because Horner had needlessly attempted to push a driver out who would have been the future of Red Bull and, along with Verstappen, would have built a dynasty never seen before. They were wasting all of that for no good reason at all.

Horner couldn’t say anything, realizing that amidst the rationalization of his actions, he had seen it as being easy to convince Mateschitz to side with them, overlooking that he was a crazy fan of Formula 1.

Although he was not too outwardly expressive of it, behind the scenes he was crazy for it to the point he bought two teams to make it a reality.

To that person, Horner had not only tried to sideline a monstrously talented driver, but also made them liable for almost billions of dollars in fines while opening them up to reactionary attacks from the other side, who were rich beyond what they had imagined.

The room remained silent for four full minutes before Mateschitz finally asked the speechless Horner, "When did you start talking to them about delaying his promotion despite him living up to the agreed conditions?"

"A few days after Baku."

"So two weeks have passed, and it took them that short amount of time to mount a reaction and launch an attack on us? Have they agreed to that?"

"Not yet; we are still negotiating."

"What have you offered them?"

"We are up to fifty million dollars in compensation for remaining in AlphaTauri until the end of the season."

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," Mateschitz laughed as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world. 50 million dollars to a family that was willing to spend billions of dollars as a retaliatory measure made it look like someone offering him a Red Bull can in return for giving up something very lucrative.

"We didn’t know about that, as we thought their net worth to be a few million dollars at most."

"And what were you planning to do if they didn’t agree to that? You were not really expecting me to fund those billions in fines, right? I wouldn’t even have that much money if I sold the company."

"We would have gone ahead and terminated his contract and paid the termination fee of 200 million dollars, but we can stop now and go ahead with the promotion if you say so," Horner added, wanting to make it clear that nothing was set in stone and they could turn things around.

Mateschitz didn’t say anything as he turned to look at the documents that were related to the acquisition offer for the distribution companies in South America and India for quite some time before he said, "No player is bigger than the team, but I want to talk with his side first before making a decision. Now, give my secretary their contact information and set up a meeting as fast as possible."

When he heard those words, a few things finally clicked into place for Horner. He remembered that although Dietrich loved F1 like crazy, he loved Red Bull the company even more and was a brilliant, ruthless businessman.

He had built Red Bull’s global distribution network from scratch, and to him, an F1 driver, no matter how historically talented, was still just an asset to promote the drink. If a driver tried to weaponize the actual beverage business or threaten Red Bull’s corporate revenue streams to get a promotion, Mateschitz would view it as an act of corporate warfare and extreme disrespect.

From that, he finally saw a glimmer of hope and an opportunity to exonerate himself, since it meant that despite him being the one who pushed Fatih’s side into such an aggressive move, that aggressive move in itself was now considered an attack on something Dietrich loved more than his F1 team. He wouldn’t care who was right and who was wrong, as he would just move for the sake of the company.

"I will arrange the meeting immediately," Horner said, because he saw the Y?ld?r?ms’ aggressive move as them pushing Red Bull’s hand for Fatih’s promotion, and hadn’t considered that it might be aimed at something else.

He believed that, as a result of that, these two sides would never come to any agreement since each side would want the other to first stop their attacks or meet their conditions before they stopped theirs.

This would lead to the two sides going all out, reducing the amount of backlash he would be receiving until the war ended, and with people of that level of net worth, these fights usually took a long time.

He knew when that time came, Dietrich would definitely turn to him, but before that, if he did something that would be helpful for their side, he might even be able to fully immunize himself from the consequences, or he could even parachute to another team while his stock was still high.

"On Wednesday or Thursday, they should be arriving here for the race, so we can have it then," Horner said.

"No, I want it as fast as possible. Tomorrow would be even better. I need to make my decision before the race weekend starts," Dietrich said, making it clear that if this meeting didn’t go well, Fatih was definitely going to be booted from the team before this race weekend started and be replaced by Yuki.

"I will contact them now and see it settled," Horner said before he stood, collected his bag, and left the office, walking as fast as possible while slow enough to not be seen as if he were running from the office.

Dietrich looked back at the files for quite some time, as inwardly he was already preparing himself to boot Fatih from the team if the situation called for it, since he was not going to tolerate an attack on his company from someone who should be focused on driving.