Who cares if the races are dull? F1 drama has never been better Marina Hyde

Episode two of the new season of Drive to Survive begins with a scene of Father Christmas visiting Red Bull team principal Christian Horner's house. It's a charming vignette for the show - just Horner, his wife, Geri Halliwell, his two young children and a TV crew.

- Marina Hyde

Those childhood opportunities to be part of father's content farm are so precious, and Santa begins by asking: "Has Dad been good this year?" No, would now seem to be the answer.

Not to break out the journalese or anything, but the boss of Formula One's entirely dominant team is embroiled in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, thanks to a mushrooming scandal that I have very little legal leeway in terms of being able to discuss fully here.

It's all very Keeping Up With the Carkrashians. Let's just say that Horner was accused of controlling behaviour by a female Red Bull employee, was cleared last month by a resolutely opaque internal probe, only for a cache of messages said to be between the two to be leaked.

At the season opener in Bahrain, Horner was seen in intense discussion with the arguably even ghastlier father of his unbeatable driver, world champion Max Verstappen, while his Spice Girl wife jetted in to kiss him for the cameras with the jaw clench of a wronged Tory wife. F1 then headed to the next human rights abusing petrostate - Saudi Arabia - just as a whistleblower told the governing body that its own president intervened to overturn one driver's penalty in that very race last year.