Don't write Red Bull off despite departures - Brown

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says Red Bull should never be written off as a front-running Formula 1 team, despite the number of high-profile departures in recent years.

Gianpiero Lambiase became the latest senior figure to announce he is leaving Red Bull earlier this month, heading to McLaren as chief racing officer no later than 2028. Lambiase follows the likes of Christian Horner, Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Rob Marshall, and Will Courtenay as significant personnel to either move teams or be removed from their positions, while there has been a clear top three teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren so far this year.

“I think it would be very foolish to write Red Bull off,” Brown said. “I also think Audi's done a very good job. So I think it would be foolish to not think the other teams are going to move up the grid quickly.

“I think things are only going to consolidate over time, not widen. And we see how quickly the sport can change and how people quickly can get competitive and then sometimes not. I think they have to kind of do a little bit of a reset, right? They lost a lot of people, Christian, Wheatley, GP eventually, Newey, Dan Fallows – although I think Dan's now maybe back [at Racing Bulls].

“So I think much of what I came into [at McLaren] – which was a different situation because [Red Bull] were very competitive – but the majority of the pit wall has changed [too]. So I think Laurent's going to come in. I rate Laurent. I think he does a very good job. He's technical, he's young, and I think he's got to rebuild the people that he lost and rebuild the team. And I have no doubt he will.

“And much like McLaren had an immense amount of talent that just needed to be unlocked. I think that's probably the same as Red Bull. They've been very dominant up to not very long ago. So there's a lot of talent in there, and I think he’ll just need to get it redirected.”

Comparing Red Bull’s situation with when he joined McLaren in 2016, Brown says the biggest changes were not only related to personnel, but also the environment they work in.

“People and culture, by a country mile,” he said. “That's the easiest question to answer. I think about my first day joining, it was a dark environment. And that was literally from the paint on the race car being black and dark grey to the walls, you know, that you could feel it was a cold environment.

“It wasn't a happy environment. The partners weren't happy, our drivers weren't happy, the majority of our race team wasn't happy, a lot of conspiracy theories running around. And so I think we're a much more vibrant team. There was a huge amount of talent in here. It was just about unlocking it, providing motivation, excitement, bringing some fun back.

“We race cars for a living, so it's more fun winning than losing. But at the end of the day, it's a pretty fun job. So getting everyone in a teamwork environment and the culture that all of the people in the leadership team – obviously, Andrea is the one that's most visible to all of you, but my head of people and talent, my CFO, our commercial department, comms, they've all done a wonderful job in their respective departments.

“I think when I joined, there was an us and them, upstairs, downstairs, racing team, commercial department. Now it's exciting to see when we do something like a weight-saving exercise and you start having to modify the vinyl on your race car, as small as that may seem, the commercial department gets excited about feeling like they're contributing to the solution to make the race car faster.

“So when we win on Sunday, the finance department knows they had a big role in that, etc. So when you can get 1400 people – not all of those are on Formula 1, but the predominant amount – rowing in the same direction and all understanding how important their role is to our on-track success, it creates an awesome environment.

“I wouldn't want to be as naive to say we have no politics in here, but I'd say we have very little.”