Brown 'not surprised' by Horner's Red Bull sacking

Christian Horner (left, with Zak Brown) led Red Bull to eight drivers' championship and six constructors' championship titles

McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown says he was "not surprised" Christian Horner was sacked as team boss of Red Bull.

Horner was dismissed as team principal and CEO of Red Bull on 9 July, three days after their driver Max Verstappen finished fifth in the British Grand Prix.

Brown told Canadian television channel TSN: "I'm maybe [surprised by] the timing, but not the result.

"There's been a lot of drama there the last couple of years and it doesn't seem like that drama has been calming down - maybe been getting worse. So I'm not surprised."

Red Bull has given no reason for the removal of Horner, who has been replaced by Frenchman Laurent Mekies, formerly the principal of second team Racing Bulls.

Horner had led the team since their debut in 2005. His departure came 17 months after it emerged that a female employee had accused him of sexual harassment and coercive, controlling behaviour. Two separate Red Bull internal investigations dismissed the allegations, which Horner has always denied.

Since then, Red Bull have gone through a tempestuous period, including a decline in their competitiveness.

Their chief technical officer Adrian Newey resigned in April last year, at least partly as a result of the allegations against Horner. Newey - regarded as the greatest F1 designer in history - now works for Aston Martin.

In July last year, long-time sporting director Jonathan Wheatley also resigned. He is now team principal of Sauber, which next year is morphing into Audi's factory team.

And in September Red Bull head of strategy Will Courtenay signed for McLaren. He is currently being held to his contract and is expected to join his new team at some point next year.

While Verstappen won his fourth consecutive world title last season, the Dutchman won only twice in the final 13 races of the year and Red Bull finished third in the constructors' championship.

This year, Verstappen is third in the drivers' championship with just two wins in the first 12 races and the team fourth in the constructors' championship, and Red Bull have been engulfed by speculation about whether the Dutchman might leave for Mercedes at the end of the season.

Brown has had a strained relationship with Horner over the past few years.

He said Red Bull's breaching of the budget cap in 2021 "constitutes cheating", and in an interview with BBC Sport last summer Brown said he and Horner "used to get on".

Brown has taken a less provocative approach to Horner this year, but has not hidden his disdain for Red Bull's sniping about the legality of the McLaren car behind the scenes.

At the Miami Grand Prix, he drank from a bottle labelled "tyre water", a reference to Horner complaining to the FIA about their belief that McLaren were using water to cool their tyres. Brown considered the allegation spurious, and said it had no foundation in reality.

He described the bottle as "poking fun at a serious issue".

Brown said: "Teams have historically made allegations of other teams - most recently one team focuses on that strategy more than others. And I think that there is a proper way to protest a team at the end of a race, and you have to make it formal, disclose where it comes from, put some money down."