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Horner doesn't fear Red Bull exodus as 200 workers 'join from Mercedes'
While many important figures have been announced to leave Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner disagrees with the fact that the Red Bull staff are decreasing in numbers. The team principal says he would have liked to keep key personnel members like Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley on board, but talked about the employees his team are bringing in to Milton Keynes.
Adrian Newey will join Aston Martin in March 2025, and Wheatley will become Audi's team principal in the the 2026 season. Earlier, chief engineer Rob Marshall left to work for rivals McLaren, and Will Courtenay will also join Marshall at the Woking-based team. Starting from mid-2026, he will be McLaren's sporting director, the role Wheatley holds at Red Bull.
"Adrian has been on the brink of retiring for 10 years! So we had to be prepared for that and I believe we’ve got strength and depth. He’s chosen to continue and continue elsewhere. And of course, Jonathan, likewise, a long-term member, but they’re two more higher-profile names. The reality is that’s just two people out of 2000 people that we have within the group," Horner addressed the departure of Newey and Wheatley to Channel 4.
New recruits to join Red Bull too
The team principal in confident that Red Bull can perform well even with as a number of high-profile employees opted for different challenges, and not worried about his team's future.
"We’ve recruited, I think, close to 250 people during the last 12 months, across the project, into powertrains, into the brand new engine shop that we’re building. We don’t talk about the over 200 people we’ve bought from Mercedes. There’s a lot of focus on the two people that are leaving, because they’re slightly more public facing," the 50-year-old Briton underlined.
This article was written in collaboration with Corwin Kunst
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30 September 2024
