Geri Halliwell will attend Bahrain Grand Prix amid Christian Horner Red Bull scandal
The start of the new season has been overshadowed.
Geri Halliwell will join her under-fire husband Christian Horner at the Bahrain Grand Prix amid the scandal involving the Red Bull chief.
The former Spice Girl is understood to have flown, via a private jet, to the Gulf State earlier this week, prior to the alleged leak of messages purporting to be between her spouse and a female staff member.
Horner was cleared of any impropriety earlier this week following the swift conclusion of an internal investigation, but the start of the new F1 season has been almost totally overshadowed after a tranche of alleged leaked WhatsApp messages were emailed to journalists and leading F1 figures.
The 50-year-old was summoned for showdown talks by the sport’s chiefs on Friday, after which is was business as usual for Red Bull who, via world champion Max Verstappen, secured pole position ahead of this afternoon’s race.
Halliwell, meanwhile, was said to have been left ‘stunned’ and ‘humiliated’ following Thursday’s leak.
The ex-pop star is now said to be contemplating her marriage to Horner, whom she tied the knot with back in 2015.
Despite the speculation engulfing the couples’ future, Geri, according to the Daily Mail, will be on the grid alongside her spouse.
Horner cut a lonely figure as he arrived for work this morning looking to mastermind a strategy that would help Verstappen capitalise on the pole position he cemented at Friday’s qualifying session.
The president of Formula 1’s governing body, meanwhile, told the Financial Times the controversy around Horner is damaging the sport, but that the FIA won’t conduct its own inquiry unless it receives a complaint.
Ahead of Saturday’s season-opening rqace, Mohammed Ben Sulayem said any complaint lodged with its compliance officer would be investigated but it had not received one related to Horner’s situation and would not ‘jump the gun,’ the newspaper reported.
‘It’s damaging the sport,’ Ben Sulayem told the newspaper, which added that he was speaking Friday after a meeting with Horner. ‘This is damaging on a human level.’
