15/06/2013
NEWS STORY
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has been awarded an OBE in the Queen's birthday honours list on Friday.
On a lean day for motorsport - still no Knighthood for John Surtees or Ron Dennis, far less Bernie Ecclestone - Horner, who has led the Milton Keynes based outfit since 2005, was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport.
"I'm naturally shocked," he told reporters. "It's all a bit unexpected, incredible really. To be in the company of men and women who have achieved such great things for the country is something very, very special. This is right up there with what I have achieved in motorsport."
39-year-old Horner, who started out as a race driver, winning the Formula Renault scholarship in 1991, enjoyed success in the British Formula Renault Championship before moving on to British F3 and F2 before entering F3000 with his own team, Arden, in 1997. At the end of 1998 he retired as a race driver in order to concentrate on the running of the team.
He was recruited by Red Bull in 2005, the team scoring its first podium result a year later. In 2009, in China, Sebastian Vettel led home teammate Mark Webber for the team's first win, the German taking the world championship crown just one year later.