Rumours began to circulate that the files had been leaked by the team’s young driver guru Helmut Marko (later subject to an investigation himself into the leaks) or another senior Red Bull executive potentially at loggerheads with Horner, as the pressure mounted on team principal to resign.

“It was obviously pre-meditated to cause me the maximum amount of distraction, the maximum amount of aggravation,” says Horner. “It was obvious that end goal was for me to leave Red Bull.”

After the Netflix interviewer asks “But who leaked them?” the team boss says “That’s the multi-million dollar question.”

When the interviewer infers “But you know who,” Horner simply smiles, implying that he has at least some idea.

Many thought in the immediate aftermath of the controversy, which first emerged early February, that Horner would immediately quit – but this ultimately didn’t transpire.

“The higher you rise, the sharper the knives,” he tells Netflix. “I’ve reached the top of my game, and I never thought in a million years I’d have a challenge like this in my career.”

On the grid before the Bahrain race following the WhatsApp leak, Horner declares the GP “The only two hours of peace I f****** get!” and after his driver Max Verstappen wins says “That’s the best way to f*** all them – shut the f*** up.”

Despite the Red Bull apparently still performing, Verstappen’s father Jos then told The Daily Mail in the aftermath of the race that the team was in danger of being “torn apart” if Horner refused to step down.

The Red Bull boss is then caught saying to the ongoing turmoil: “It’s just relentless – you keep thinking it’s running out of steam, and then something else comes up.”

Senior figures did then leave in the wake of the controversy. The most successful F1 car designer in the history of the sport, Adrian Newey, elected to jump ship citing “events [that] have unfolded this year”, and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley chose to become the team principal of the new Audi F1 team as it transitions from Sauber.

At the Australian GP Netflix then uses Verstappen’s brake fire as a possible metaphor for Red Bull falling apart. Performance issues and a devastating loss of form for Sergio Perez did result in it relinquishing the constructors’ championship to McLaren, but Verstappen fought on to claim his fourth consecutive drivers’ crown.