Red Bull make major changes in quest to find the next Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel

Max Verstappen commits future to Red Bull signing £200m deal

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Red Bull have made a major change to their engineering line up in the hope of finding the next star of Formula One. The team’s head of race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin will move into a new role following the Australian Grand Prix this weekend.

Rocquelin will now work with the team’s group of young drivers. He had been the head of race engineering since 2015.

The Red Bull Junior team comprises 12 drivers, including five in Formula 2 and three in Formula 3. Rocquelin will now be tasked with finding the next Sebastian Vettel, whom he was the race engineer for between 2010 and 2013, or reigning world champion Max Verstappen.

On the change, team principal Christian Horner said: “The engineering team is continuing to evolve, especially as we have to look at efficiencies with the budget cap. Rocky has done an amazing job trackside for us over the last 15 or 16 years, race engineering Sebastian to all of his [Red Bull Racing] race victories and world championships and leading the engineering team for last year’s success as well.

“He is going to evolve and take on a new role working with our plethora of young drivers, where we’ll be looking to utilise all his experience from working with so many drivers to continue to develop the Red Bull Junior drivers. [He will] very much take a leading role in that project and how they integrate into Red Bull Racing, applying scientific tools to that as well.

“So it’s an exciting, new challenge for Rocky. It will be his last race weekend here before he moves on to that role.”

Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, will replace Rocquelin as the head of race engineering for Red Bull. But he will also remain in his current role with Verstappen.

Horner said: “The restructure will see ‘GP’ taking a step up to become the lead engineer trackside while still maintaining the role as Max’s race engineer. So it’s evolution.

“It’s great to see that within the team. Both of the guys are going to excel in their next roles.”

Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has claimed pole for the Australian Grand Prix. Verstappen was second, just pipped by two tenths of a second, with his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez third.

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