Otmar Szafnauer believes Red Bull ‘secret sauce’ carried over to McLaren by key signing

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McLaren has become the benchmark team in Formula 1 having now overtaken Red Bull in the competitive order midway through 2024.

The team has taken wins with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri at the Miami and Hungarian Grands Prix, while both have regularly finished on the podium and scored more points than Red Bull in the last nine races.

It comes after Red Bull enjoyed a dominant run of victories with the RB19 last year when they won 21 out of a possible 22 races, while Max Verstappen took his third consecutive World Championship after achieving 18 of those victories.

Now the team faces an uphill struggle after the upgrades made to the RB20 failed to provide them with extra performance, while several members of Red Bull’s inner success circle are also set to leave by the end of the season.

While McLaren has improved its resources in recent years, with the addition of a new wind tunnel coming online last season, they have also made significant changes to their backroom staff.

Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer believes this has enabled them to beat Red Bull at their own game in recent years when speaking on the James Allen on F1 podcast.

McLaren’s key Red Bull signing responsible for recent success?

McLaren signed a major member to its technical team last year when it announced it had poached Rob Marshall from Red Bull, who officially moved into the role of chief designer in January this year in place of David Sanchez.

Marshall had been at Red Bull for 18 years and worked closely with Adrian Newey, having been one of the key members that enabled the team’s success in the early 2010s with Sebastian Vettel.

Szafnauer believes his expertise has enabled them to exploit certain areas of the current regulations that they have previously not looked at in the past.

“It’s definitely possible for one person to come in and say: ‘The secret sauce at Red Bull was this, you should be looking in this direction,'” said Szafnauer.

“When you hear things like the aero performance is unlocked through some mechanical design elements of the car – and you know what those are and how those mechanical design elements actually unlock the performance – you can point that team in that direction to start looking here.”

Rob Marshall’s influence felt at McLaren

Since Marshall joined McLaren it is hard not to argue that his influence will have been massive on their fortunes this year.

Marshall started off his F1 career at Benetton in the 1990s as a design engineer, staying at the team through its transition to Renault where he was head of mechanical design at the time Fernando Alonso won the 2005 and 2006 championships.

He is credited with being part of the design team that came up with the ‘mass damper’ system, which became the secret weapon behind Alonso’s title success at Renault. When Marshall moved to Red Bull in 2006, he was tasked with focusing on the big regulation switch planned for 2009. It ultimately proved to be a success, with Vettel winning titles between 2010 and 2013.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine

McLaren started the season seemingly happy with second place at the Chinese Grand Prix, but as the gap appeared to close with Red Bull they have now emerged as genuine title contenders.

Norris has stated that he does not have what it takes yet to win a championship, while the team orders saga at Hungary suggests they are thinking more about clinching their first Constructors’ Championship since 1998.