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Toto Wolff on Christian Horner: 'Sense of entitlement' cost him job

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has said Christian Horner had a "sense of entitlement" which ultimately cost him his job at Red Bull.

Wolff and Horner, who was sacked by Red Bull after 20 years in June, had many high-profile spats off the track during their teams' battles on it -- most notably in 2021, when Max Verstappen controversially won the title ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

FIA race director Michael Massi incorrectly applied the rules towards the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix finale, leading Verstappen to overtake Hamilton on the final lap for the race and championship win.

"I talked to Lewis about it yesterday," Wolff told The Telegraph. "I think about it every day and so does he.

"It's stayed with the team, too. Both were deserving champions, but the referee made a bad call, to use a football analogy, and you can't reverse it. The goal has been scored, the game is finished."

Wolff said Horner was "never able to admit" to him that what occurred was unjust.

"I try to look at it from the other side -- and from their point of view, they deserved to be world champions," Wolff added. "They had had some incidents that were unfair to them throughout the season, and the outcome of that race is a fair representation of the performance levels during the season.

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"But Christian was never able to admit the same -- that if it was the other way round and had happened to them that day, it would have been catastrophic, and he would have come up with all kinds of insults. And I think that the ability to be introspective or be able to see the other side with some compassion is a total gap in his personality."

Wolff believes that personality trait was behind Horner's departure from Red Bull.

"It's the sense of entitlement he has," Wolff said. "And that bit him in the end, because he felt entitled to all the power, and Red Bull didn't want to give him that power."