The startling comment Christian Horner made to me just days before he was sacked by Red Bull reveals the real story of his downfall - and this is what he and Geri will do next: JONATHAN McEVOY

It had all seemed so perfect only a week before. It was Clay Day at the Horners' manor in Oxfordshire. A shoot. The sun was shining. Geri was the perfect hostess at Elevenses, all in the name of the Wings for Life charity.

Yes, there were still nagging doubts over Christian Horner’s future as Red Bull team principal for 17 months, since he was accused last February of sending texts of a coercive nature to a female employee.

While the worst of that had blown away, it never quite disappeared, despite his being cleared in two internal hearings by two different lawyers.

In the end, the equation was that this trouble would be tolerated so long as results went Red Bull’s way. When they didn’t, he was freshly vulnerable.

I saw Horner in Austria a week before the British Grand Prix. He did not look happy, though a personal matter, a private tragedy, may have been the reason. But upstairs in the Red Bull motorhome, aka 'the Energy Station', the team’s, nay the energy drink company’s, owners sat in discussion.

‘Are you here to see Bernie?’ Horner asked me as we met, referring to our mutual friend Mr Ecclestone. ‘Yes, I told him, but he’s busy with your bosses right now.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I have been with them too.’ There was not much smiling, I can tell you. Whether the die was being cast there I don’t know for certain. We do not yet know the circumstances of his departure. But his demeanour seemed to betray concern.

He had been supported through his troubles of the last year by the Thai wing of Red Bull’s ownership, Chalerm Yoovidhya, against a move in Austria to depose him. The Austrian side of the business is led by Mark Mateschitz, heir of Dietrich, the late founder of the company.

At some stage Yoovidhya, the richest man in Thailand, with a fortune of £26.5billion, lost confidence in Horner. That day in Austria, at the team’s home race, I went on to the grid to gauge the interactions between Horner and Yoovidhya and his wife, Daranee, aware of Horner’s crestfallen countenance an hour or two earlier when we had spoken.

Relations were cordial, even warm, Horner pulling them in for pictures with the car, and I moved on.

A week later in Silverstone, an afternoon after Clay Day, he was still in good form. He had just broken from a meeting downstairs in the Energy Station with Max Verstappen, his star driver.

The four-time world drivers' champion and I were going to do an interview and we went upstairs to a quiet table away from the dinner plates on the ground floor, where the team ate.

Verstappen was relaxed. He told me he wanted to stay at Red Bull rather than move to Mercedes. We ran the piece in Mail Sport and Horner thanked me for it. It, namely Max being onside with Horner, was seen by his side as a timely buttress to his reign, which had lasted for more than 20 years from Red Bull’s inception as a racing team in 2005.

But results at the British Grand Prix were not good, though not as catastrophic as Austria (Verstappen retired, Yuki Tsunoda last). Verstappen finished fifth at Silverstone and again complained of an undrivable car.

But what do you expect when you have lost most of your best men from around you? One key figure, Adrian Newey, had decamped to Aston Martin after the Horner scandal broke, and he was the engineering genius without equal in the sport’s history.

How many times can they have turned round and thought, ‘Ah, I’d like to run that by Adrian,’ and realised he is no longer there?

Red Bull's sporting director Jonathan Wheatley should not be confused with Newey, but he was a good organiser, a steady pair of hands. And, of all ironies, he is now at Sauber and what did they do on Sunday at Silverstone? They carried Nico Hulkenberg to his first podium in his 239th start, aged 37.

I wrote more than a year ago that Horner might stay on, but that he was at risk of being an emperor without clothes. That verdict set relations back!

And in the background through all Horner’s travails was Jos Verstappen, father of Max and a chief agitator against his son’s boss. As he told Mail Sport in Bahrain last year, when the texting cache emerged in a leaked email, the team would ‘explode’ if Horner stayed.

He had piped down in recent months, but his anger was dormant rather than extinguished. Old enmities would not die overnight, though Jos put them aside to an extent because Max had called for peace – Max just wanted a winning car.

That is where Horner had excelled. Eight drivers’ championships and six constructors’ titles stand testimony to that – and he pulled it off not only with his former driver Sebastian Vettel but with Verstappen, it being rare to do so in separate phases.

It puts him ahead of everyone, almost. Only Ron Dennis, legend of McLaren, has won more as a team principal.

There are rumours that Horner will join Ferrari. Heavens, they could do with him, and he was their first choice a couple of years ago when he declined it and Fred Vasseur was instead given the top job. But it’s too early for that. Horner, I understand, wants quiet time with Geri and the family for a little while.

I doubt he is done with Formula One for ever. It is in his DNA, a fabric of his life woven over two decades of dedication, from when he came on the scene as the youngest team principal in the sport to rub shoulders with the likes of Ecclestone, Dennis and Flavio Briatore.

There is some gloating out there at Horner’s defenestration. People are entitled to hold what views they wish. I do not gloat. I have known Christian for the larger part of our professional lives.

He has flaws like the rest of us. But, whatever else, Formula One has lost one of its last great figures, for now, and the sport is the poorer for his demise.