Montoya: Marko realized he had no power anymore

Marko became the latest member of the old guard at Red Bull to depart after the firing of Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner, as the likes of Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley jumped ship before that.

Marko has recently opened up about the situation within Red Bull up until Horner's departure revealing dirty games and politicking while insisting that his decision to retired was due to disappointment after Max Verstappen missed out on a fifth F1 Title at the 2025 season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

But there is an impression that Red Bull, with both their F1 teams, Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls, are looking to start the new regulation era in F1 in 2026 with a clean slate, eliminating the old faces and looking to gain more control over their F1 operations.

That is the view of Montoya, who said: "As well as Christian and Helmut, they lost Jonathan Wheatley to Audi. And Adrian Newey left a year ago.

"From what you hear, Austria wants to get more involved and run the team," he revealed. "That's a double-edged sword.

"If they get more control of the team, then it becomes a dictatorship running a team. I don't like using that word, but there'll be one way of doing things, one direction, under one leadership.

"You need one guy making decisions, whether it's the right one or wrong one. When you start involving big corporations, then all of a sudden every decision needs a meeting. And everybody has a different opinion, and they start looking at it from the budget point of view and the marketing point of view," he explained.

The seven-time Grand Prix winner believes Marko saw those changes coming and decided to leave; he added: "I think Helmut realized he had no power anymore.

"He had full control of the drivers. He had full control of the decisions. And I think he realised now that anything he wants to do needs to be approved. He got to a point where he said to himself, 'I'm not going to be anybody's employee.'

"It's really hard when you have had autonomy and then you lose all that," the Columbian pointed out. "Everybody's going to question everything.

"There are rumors going around that supposedly he had signed an F2 driver, Alex Dunne, the Irish driver, but then had to renege on the contract. He left McLaren, signed with Red Bull, and a week later Helmut apparently called him to say, 'Sorry, you're out.'

"The other rumor is that he signed Lindblad without anybody's consent. I'm not surprised at all by that. It was now or never," Montoya concluded.

(Quotes from Grosvenor Casinos)