GERI Halliwell’s marriage to Christian Horner is said to be “in question” after private texts sent by her husband to a female employee were leaked.
The Spice Girls star, 51, has been left humiliated after a vast trove of intimate texts between the F1 chief and a female colleague were revealed just a day after he was cleared of wrongdoing.
Splash NewsGeri Halliwell and Christian Horner leave St Marys Church in Woburn on their wedding day in 2015[/caption]
GettyThe couple pictured at the F1 Grand Prix of Italy at Autodromo di Monza in 2014[/caption]
PAHorner pictured at training in Barhrain today[/caption]
Sources close to Geri say she was “relieved and elated” when the case against her Red Bull Racing boss husband Horner was thrown out on Wednesday.
Ginger Spice Geri endured three weeks of torment in which she was said to have stood by her man after being left in “floods of tears” when the scandal first broke.
Insiders say Geri had even begged Horner to “make it go away”, reports the Mail.
Now the singer has again been left “extremely humiliated” just a day after she thought Horner, who she wed in 2015, was in the clear.
Pals of the couple say their marriage is “now in question for the first time” after the flirty text exchange between Horner and a female staffer was shared.
Friends of Geri fear the latest bombshell will “destroy” the mum-of-two, who shares seven-year-old son Monty with Horner.
One pal told the Mail: “It has all come crashing down.
“The tears stopped when the judgment came in on Wednesday, now they absolutely will have started again. This will destroy her.
“All along Christian promised there was nothing in it.”
The couple were understood to have been locked in long-distance talks as aides attempted to manage the crisis.
It remained unclear whether Geri had been shown any of the messages prior to their distribution.
Team Principal Horner was in Bahrain when the messages leaked on Thursday – and he was pictured at training today.
He jetted to the Gulf kingdom on Wednesday before he was cleared of wrongdoing after being accused of inappropriate behavior and sending improper messages.
Geri meanwhile was back home in the UK, but was understood to be due to fly out before the weekend.
Hundreds of WhatsApp messages were sent to F1 teams and media outlets yesterday.
While there don’t appear to be any explicit images in the messages, some of the texts are sexually suggestive in nature.
Messages appeared to suggest Horner pestered the woman for pictures while others discussed a solo sex act in an aircraft toilet.
The woman – who works with Horner at the all-conquering grand prix team’s Milton Keynes HQ – apparently tired of her boss’s pleas for pictures and sexy chat, according to the WhatsApp dossier.
How Christian Horner’s shock text were leaked
By Ben Hunt
IT was an anonymous email sent and designed for maximum impact.
It landed in my inbox almost 24 hours to the minute since Christian Horner was cleared of any wrongdoing following Red Bull’s internal investigation.
Other names included Liberty Media chief Greg Maffei, who owns the rights to F1. The FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem and F1 CEO Stefano Dominacali.
The F1 team bosses were also included for good measure. As was Max Verstappen’s father, Jos.
It was from an anonymous sender, the title was simply the date – ‘Feb Twenty Nine’.
Inside it was a Google Drive link containing 79 files claiming to be the evidence from the independent investigation.
There is no way of knowing if they were real or fake yet irrespectively it sent another shockwave through the F1 paddock before this season had even started.
Horner was sitting on the team’s pitwall during second practice in Bahrain when the email dropped.
After the session, he walked out of the team’s garage and into the hospitality unit where he remained as the nuclear fallout began.
He’d survived the outcome of the internal investigation into improper conduct following a complaint from a female colleague.
One wonders whether he will survive this time after this very public humiliation – again, irrespective if they were indeed real or fake.
Just hours earlier, McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, called on the sport’s governing body, the FIA, demanding transparency.
“I just read the statement, which was pretty basic,” said Wolff. “My personal opinion is we can’t really look behind the curtain.
“There is a lady in an organisation that has spoken to HR and said there was an issue and it was investigated and yesterday the sport has received the message that it’s all fine, we’ve looked at it.
“I believe with the aspiration as a global sport, on such critical topics, it needs more transparency and I wonder what the sport’s position is?
“We’re competitors, we’re a team and we can have our own personal opinions or not. But it’s more like a general reaction or action that we as a sport need to assess, what is right in that situation and what is wrong.
“Are we talking with the right moral approach, with the values based on the speculation that is out there? As a sport, we cannot afford to leave things vague and opaque on critical topics like this, because this is going to catch us out.”
Brown added: “It’s the responsibility ultimately of the organisers of Formula One, the owners of Formula One, to make sure that all the racing teams and the personnel and the drivers and everyone else involved in the sport are operating in a manner in which we all live by.
“I don’t think it’s the teams’ roles and responsibilities. That’s up to FIA and Formula One to ultimately decide and ask what they feel gives them the level of transparency they need to ultimately come to their conclusion and we just have to count on them that they fulfil that obligation to all of us.”
The emailed file will only increase that pressure in the form of scrutiny on Horner – who has always denied the accusations.
It does also put Red Bull in a tricky position.
Should the emailed file be legitimate and have made up elements from the initial report, which had been thoroughly examined and presented by the independent KC, then surely this is nothing new to them and their decision to stick with their team principal remains.
To perform a u-turn on that simply now they have become public would possibly see criticism that they intended to keep their report private to save face.
Whatever the outcome, it is a mess for the world champions.
Reports of a wedge driven between Horner and Verstappen’s father have grown in recent weeks.
So it was interesting that Jos Verstappen was in the paddock and wearing a team jacket and seemed unmoved to the chaos happening around him.
She asks him to stop – and even asks how the dad would feel if Geri was behaving in the same way with one of her staff.
Texts also suggest Horner became apologetic as he realised he had caused offence – and responded by asking the woman to delete their entire WhatsApp history.
The mega-leak appeared to be in line with the original accusation faced over alleged “sexually suggestive “ messages sent by Horner.
It was later claimed that the barrister-led inquiry into the team boss was into “controlling and coercive” behaviour towards the woman.
There is no suggestion that any pictures featuring sexual content are included in the WhatApps leaked so far.
The move was also calculated to cause maximum damage to Red Bull Racing boss Horner’s career – just 24 hours before the start of the new Grand Prix season in Bahrain.
Horner, who married the pop star in 2015, has always vehemently denied the claims and vowed to fight to clear his name.
He said: “I won’t comment on anonymous speculation, but to reiterate, I have always denied the allegations.”
“I respected the integrity of the independent investigation and fully cooperated with it every step of the way.
“It was a thorough and fair investigation conducted by an independent specialist barrister and it has concluded, dismissing the complaint made.”
AlamyHorner pictured in Bahrain yesterday[/caption]
AFPGeri, pictured with Horner in 2023, has been left humiliated by the scandal[/caption]
GettyThe pair pictured at the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco at Circuit de Monaco last year[/caption]
AlamyHorner, right, speaking with chief technical officer Adrian Newey yesterday[/caption]