Red Bull has revealed how Formula 1’s financial environment contributed to the team’s inability to prevent key staff departures such as Jonathan Wheatley and Will Courtenay this year.
“You can’t have a Galactus because you can’t afford it. You have to keep an eye on the value for money and that forces you to make some really difficult decisions,” says team boss Christian Horner about the challenge to retain the current Formula 1 top talent.
Red Bull is currently going through a period of restructuring after several senior employees accepted positions at other racing teams.
Design guru Adrian Newey moved to Aston Martin, sports director Wheatley became team boss at Sauber/Audi, and strategy boss Courtenay joined McLaren as sports director. The departures made headlines after a difficult season for Red Bull both on and off the track.
While some observers see this as a sign of problems within the team, Red Bull emphasizes that such departures are not uncommon, as rivals often make generous offers to poach experienced personnel. At the same time, in the era of cost caps, it has become difficult to make counteroffers.
Background: Formula 1’s budget rules take into account the salaries of all relevant employees of a team, with the exception of the three top earners.
While the identities of these three people at each team are not disclosed, it is believed that neither Wheatley nor Courteney are part of Red Bull.
Horner: We couldn’t offer them more
“It’s tough,” says Horner. “Jonathan was a very good sports director, but also an expensive asset. So you have to weigh things up. When he got the opportunity to move to Audi, I told him: ‘You know what? I think you should do it. We’re in our possibilities and what we can do for you here.'”
Horner understands his senior executives’ motivations for leaving the team – particularly when circumstances allow them to take up a position that was not available at Red Bull, with the added bonus of a higher salary.
However, their departures are not all negative, as they allow others to move up to higher positions within the current organization, giving them career development that prevents them from feeling stuck and feeling the need to look elsewhere.
“Jonathan had been here for a long time and was given the opportunity to become team boss,” adds Horner. “We didn’t have this chance and his role became more and more one-dimensional. He was hardly here anymore, he was always at the racetrack.”
“He has developed further and that has, in turn, enabled others to rise naturally. You have to have this evolution,” says the Brit.
Will Courteney, who has been with the team for 20 years, offered McLaren a role with a significantly higher salary. Horner also shows understanding for this change: “We talked about other tasks within the group. But given what was offered in the McLaren, you have to say: ‘Good luck. Accept it.'”
“At the same time, this gives Hannah Schmitz the opportunity to move up, and if she didn’t have that opportunity, she would have been a prime target for someone. There is an evolution in every organization. We had less than five percent turnover here, what a great one enormous loyalty.”
Although the spotlight on the turnover of top executives is inevitably greater than on lesser-known employees, Horner emphasizes that the natural turnover in Formula 1 means that organizations are constantly changing.
“When I started here in 2005, we put together a great team,” he remembers. “When I look today at the engineers who were there for the victories with Vettel and Webber from 2010 to 2013, I think there are only three people left here out of the probably 25 people in the engineering office.”
“There’s Paul Monaghan, who’s still with us. Michael Manning, who’s also still with us, and probably only Jonathan and Will were there at the time too.”
“Hannah was a graduate of Cambridge University at the time, but the rest of the team: the race engineers, the control engineers, everything is evolving, and that’s how it has to be in every organization,” explains the Red Bull team boss.
Newey didn’t want to leave Formula 1
The most prominent departure from Red Bull, however, is Newey, who is moving to Aston Martin with a well-paid contract. The design expert will join the Silverstone-based team in March. Horner believes that Red Bull’s partnership with Newey was coming to an end anyway.
When asked whether the turmoil at Red Bull at the start of the season was the trigger for the move, Horner replied: “It’s easy to see a causal connection, but the reality is that things have nothing to do with each other.”
Newey’s departure had already become apparent at the end of 2023: “The original agreement was that he should retire from Formula 1 at the end of 2025 and really only act as a mentor. Otherwise I would have lost the other guys in our technical department to some competing teams.”
“But I think he felt that his time in Formula 1 wasn’t over yet and so he made his own decisions, which are understandable.”
“The deal he got from Aston, with shares and so on, is something that was simply not up for discussion here. “I can understand Adrian wanting to do another lap around the block in Formula 1, and As a shareholder and partner in a team, I can’t blame him for that,” emphasizes Horner.
The Red Bull team boss once again emphasizes how much work has changed in the new age of cost caps. “Formula 1 is very different than it was five years ago. We spend 90 percent of our time asking ourselves: What can you afford within the budget limit?”
“With a budget of $140 million, every cent has to be spent very wisely. The larger teams have sometimes carried a bit of excess in the past. However, the cost cap has forced efficiency.”
Source: www.sport.de
