News24.com | A man named Musk in the F1 paddock: Red Bull boss Horner welcomes shop talk with tech mogul

• Elon Musk visited the Red Bull garage during the 2023 Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.
  
• Musk expressed interest in the technologies used in an F1 car's powertrain.
• Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was also in attendance at the race, visiting the McLaren team.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner spoke about details of his garage meeting with one of the world's richest people, Elon Musk, at the Miami Grand Prix last weekend.

Musk's early investment in all-electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla helped propel him to becoming one of the world's wealthiest people and put him at the forefront of electrification in road cars.

Musk was spotted speaking to the Red Bull team boss over the weekend in Miami as he visited the Formula 1 paddock, and Horner explained that Musk even challenged the reigning World Champions to a race in one of his electric cars.

However, there was something of a stumbling block to that being able to take place.

"Well, it was great to see him coming to an F1 race and embracing the combustion engine again," Horner quipped while in conversation with the Financial Times.

"I think he was very impressed with the technology. Obviously, an incredibly bright guy, (he) wanted to know all about the battery and so on, and the power and the output of the car, and then threw down the gauntlet of wanting to race us with one of his electric vehicles - but then realised that they could only do half the race."

Musk would be beneficial

Musk was not the only billionaire present in the paddock last weekend, with Amazon boss Jeff Bezos also spotted on the McLaren pit wall in Miami.

While F1 has grown exponentially in recent seasons under the ownership of Liberty Media, Musk and Bezos could count themselves among the very few people who would be able to bid for an outright takeover of the sport if they should ever wish to.

That is not on the cards at this moment in time.

But Horner did explain the connection the Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter boss had with the sport, and believes that attracting some investment from him in future would only benefit the sport.

"Well, he's a partner with Larry Ellison from Oracle, who is our title partner, and it's always great to meet people like that," Horner said. "They're so involved in the tech and so forward thinking as well.

"F1 has a big regulation change in 2026 where the battery becomes ever more pertinent, and so it would obviously be great to attract talent like that to come and invest in F1."