GERI Halliwell and Christian Horner’s marriage is reportedly “in doubt” after private messages her husband sent to an employee were leaked.
The Spice Girls star, 51, was left humiliated after a raft of intimate messages between the F1 boss and a colleague were revealed just a day after he was acquitted.
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Geri Halliwell and Christian Horner leave St Marys Church in Woburn on their wedding day in 2015 Credit: Splash News
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The couple photographed at the F1 Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo di Monza in 2014. Credit: Getty
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Horner pictured at today’s training session in BahrainCredit: PA
Sources close to Gera say she was “relieved and elated” when the case against her husband Horner, the boss of Red Bull Racing, was dismissed on Wednesday.
Ginger Spice Geri endured three weeks of torture allegedly standing by her man after she was left in “floods of tears” when the scandal first broke.
Insiders say Geri even begged Horner to “remove it,” the Mail reports.
Now the singer has been left “extremely humiliated” again just a day after she thought Horner, who she married in 2015, was clean.
Friends of the couple say their marriage is “now in doubt for the first time” after a flirtatious exchange of messages between Horner and the clerk.
Geri’s friends fear the latest bombshell will “destroy” the mum-of-two, who shares seven-year-old son Monty with Horner.
A friend told the Mail: “It all came crashing down.
“The tears stopped when the verdict came on Wednesday, now they will absolutely start again. This will destroy her.
“Christian promised all along that there was nothing to it.”
The pair are understood to have been in long-distance conversations as aides tried to resolve the crisis.
Inside Christian Horner’s 4-week fight for his career from 8 hours of grilling to Geri Halliwell’s agony… and why the saga may continue
It remained unclear whether Geri was shown any of the messages before they were distributed.
Team manager Horner was in Bahrain when the messages were leaked on Thursday – and was pictured in training today.
He flew to the Gulf kingdom on Wednesday before being acquitted after being accused of inappropriate behavior and sending inappropriate messages.
Geri has since returned home to the UK, but it was understood she was due to fly out before the weekend.
Hundreds of WhatsApp messages were sent to F1 teams and media outlets yesterday.
Although the messages do not appear to contain explicit images, some texts are of a sexually suggestive nature.
The messages appeared to suggest that Horner was pestering the woman to take pictures, while others discussed a solo sex act in the plane’s toilet.
The woman – who works with Horner at the all-time Grand Prix team’s headquarters in Milton Keynes – is apparently fed up with her boss’ requests for pictures and sexy chat, according to the WhatsApp file.
How Christian Horner’s shocking text was 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 an internal investigation by Red Bull.
Other names included Liberty Media boss Greg Maffei, which owns the rights to F1. FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem and F1 CEO Stefano Dominacali.
F1 team bosses were also included for good measure. Like Max Verstappen’s father, Jos.
It was from an anonymous sender, the title was just the date – ‘February twenty-ninth’.
In it was a link to a Google Drive with 79 files that claimed to be evidence from an independent investigation.
There’s no way of knowing whether they were real or fake, but regardless, it sent another shockwave through the F1 paddock before this season had even started.
Horner was sitting on the team during the second practice session in Bahrain when the email went down.
After the session, he walked out of the team garage and into the hospitality unit where he stayed as the nuclear fallout began.
He survived the outcome of an internal investigation into misconduct following a complaint from a female colleague.
He wonders if he will survive this public humiliation again – again, regardless of whether they were real or fake.
Just hours earlier, McLaren CEO Zak Brown and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff called the sport’s governing body, the FIA, demanding transparency.
“I just read the statement, which was pretty basic,” Wolff said. “My personal opinion is that we can’t really look behind the curtain.
“There is a lady in the organization who talked to HR and said that there was a problem and that it was investigated and yesterday the sport received a message that everything is fine, we looked into it.
“I believe that with the aspiration to be a global sport, on such critical topics, it needs more transparency and I wonder what is the position of the sport?
“We are competitors, we are a team and we can have our personal opinion or not. But it is more like a general reaction or action that we as a sport need to evaluate, what is right in that situation and what is not.
“Are we talking with the right moral approach, with values based on the speculation that exists? As a sport, we can’t afford to leave things vague and opaque on critical topics like this, because this will catch us back.”
Brown added: “Ultimately it is the responsibility of the organizers of Formula 1, the owners of Formula 1, to ensure that all the racing teams and the staff and the drivers and everyone else involved in the sport operate in the way that everyone lives by.
“I don’t think it’s about the roles and responsibilities of the teams. It’s up to the FIA and Formula 1 to finally decide and ask what they think gives them the level of transparency they need to ultimately come to a conclusion, and we just have to count on that fulfill that obligation to all of us.”
The emailed dossier will only add to that pressure in the form of scrutinizing Horner – who has always denied the allegations.
It also puts Red Bull in an awkward position.
If the emailed file is legitimate and contains elements from the initial report, which have been thoroughly examined and presented by an independent CC, then this is certainly nothing new to them and their decision to stay with their team leader stands.
The twist that simply now that they went public would likely see criticism that they intended to keep their report private to save face.
Regardless of the outcome, it’s a mess for the world champions. Reports of a conflict between Horner and Verstappen’s father have grown in recent weeks.
So it was interesting that Jos Verstappen was in the paddock wearing a team jacket and seemed indifferent to the chaos going on around him.
She asks him to stop – and even asks him how Dad would feel if Geri behaved the same way with some of her staff.
The texts also suggest that Horner apologized when he realized he had offended him – and responded by asking the woman to delete her entire WhatsApp history.
The mega-leak appears to be consistent with the original charge he faced over alleged “sexually suggestive” messages sent by Horner.
It was later claimed that a lawyer-led investigation into the team boss was about “controlling and coercive” behavior towards the woman.
There is no suggestion that sexually explicit images were included in the WhatsApp messages that have been leaked so far.
The leak is estimated to cause the biggest 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 will not 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 at every step.
“It was a thorough and fair investigation by an independent specialist solicitor and she concluded, dismissing the complaint that had been lodged.”
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Horner pictured yesterday in BahrainCredit: Alamy
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Geri, pictured with Horner in 2023, was left humiliated by the scandalCredit: AFP
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The couple photographed at the F1 Monaco Grand Prix at the Circuit de Monaco last yearCredit: Getty
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Horner, right, talks to Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey yesterdayCredit: Alamy
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