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Red Bull has revealed a new structure for its Formula 1 team in the wake of sporting director Jonathan Wheatley's impending defection to Audi, including an expanded role for Max Verstappen's race engineer.
Last month Audi announced it had poached Wheatley to be its new F1 team boss, a role he'll start by "July 2025 at the latest".
He'll continue with Red Bull until the end of 2024 before an unspecified period of gardening leave. In response to his exit, Red Bull has now revealed the new structure of its race team from January 2025.
Wheatley won't be directly replaced - an inevitability when someone has served as an effective team manager for so long and accumulated increasing responsibility over the years. Instead, there will be an internal redistribution of his responsibilities.
While this has been a destabilising year for Red Bull with high-profile exits such as Wheatley and Adrian Newey, and claims of internal ructions from Max Verstappen’s father Jos, the extent of the promotions being made now shows Red Bull has got a renewed commitment from other, senior parts of the race team and factory, and is keen to reward that loyalty.
Gianpiero Lambiase will continue to serve as Verstappen's race engineer but will now have greater wider responsibilities as head of racing.
Lambiase has been a race engineer at Red Bull for nine years (first with Daniil Kvyat then Verstappen) and without Wheatley leaving and facilitating this opportunity his future at Red Bull would have been uncertain.
In his expanded role, Lambiase will take overall responsibility for the race, heritage and car build teams, as well as liaising with the strategy group and sporting regulations.
Steve Knowles, currently a senior race strategy engineer on the pitwall, will take over responsibility for regulatory matters with the FIA and report directly into Lambiase, as acting head of sporting.
Wheatley most famously lobbied then FIA race director Michael Masi to restart the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix one lap before the chequered flag.
Senior engineer Rich Wolverson will be promoted to head of race team operation and will also report directly to Lambiase. He'll be supported by current chief mechanic Phil Turner who will be promoted to race team factory operations manager.
