Dr. Helmut Marko has been a Formula 1 staple for a good few years now. He’s known for two things. One, he is the cutthroat ‘advisor’ to both Red Bull and AlphaTauri but really, he is more like Emperor Palpatine – scheming, powerful, and if not happy with your performance quick to make the cut. The second half of his ‘fame’ or infamy springs from his media persona. Without a single ounce of media training he does not have one iota of tact or savvy…or does he?
We’d be here a good while if we were to list all of Marko’s mumbling media faux pas. But since he is the topic of the day it is worth mentioning a handful, some more controversial than others. There was the time in 2020 where he wanted to organize a ‘Covid camp’ so that all Red Bull drivers could be deliberately infected with the virus.
And then there was the undercutting of his own team principal, Christian Horner. Marko enthusiastically confirmed that top Red Bull management had known for “a long time” that Honda was departing F1: “Mr. Horner is a team principal, but not involved in strategic matters. Mr. Mateschitz and I have known for a long time.”
Most recently and more disturbingly, Marko was quoted by Austrian television as saying that current Red Bull driver Sergio Perez is not as focused as Max Verstappen or Sebastian Vettel because he is “South American”.
Marko has subsequently apologized for the comment, but here’s a fiver on the table to bet that this gets swept under the rug as an ‘out of context’ quote when Horner is asked about it. For the record Marko did offer an apology: “I would like to apologise for my offensive remark and want to make it absolutely clear that I do not believe that we can generalise about the people from any country, any race, any ethnicity,” he said no doubt under pressure from some serious online discontent amongst fans.
Also, Perez is from Guadalajara which, strictly speaking, is situated in North America, Helmut.
It’s ironic that Marko has such a brash approach to his media engagements too when you learn that his doctorate is in law.
Even though he obtained it eons ago in 1967, you would expect that someone educated to this level in a field so dependent on the mastery of language would be more adept at, you know, wielding a tapestry of words into a shrewd soliloquy. Your assumption would be wrong in this case.
