Red Bull selects three staff including key Max Verstappen ally to replace Jonathan Wheatley

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Red Bull has revamped its race team structure for 2025 in response to numerous high-profile departures within their inner-success squad.

The most recent of those was long-time sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, who was a cornerstone of Red Bull’s six F1 Constructors’ titles and seven Drivers’ Championships.

His role is one of the most important within a team because he is tasked with understanding the complicated technical and sporting rules and regulations. Wheatley will instead be taking up the role of team principal at Sauber, forcing Red Bull to revise its current structure.

Wheatley joined Adrian Newey, who was the most high-profile exit from Red Bull this year, and aerodynamicist Rob Marshall who left the team to join McLaren.

Marshall has already made an impact at McLaren, while Newey is set to join Aston Martin from March last year in a highly anticipated move. According to Autosport, Red Bull is making numerous backroom staff changes to fill up some of these roles.

Red Bull’s revamped race team structure features Max Verstappen’s engineer

According to the report, Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will be stepping up to an expanded role which comes under the heading ‘head of racing’ although he will still be an engineer to the Dutchman.

Former strategy Stephen Knowles is taking up the newly created role of head of sporting regulations. He is in charge of ensuring the team complies with all of F1’s rules and regulations and will be the liaison point with the FIA.

Senior engineer of car engineering Richard Wolverson, is taking up a new position as Head of Racing Operations.

It marks an important change for Red Bull as they deal with the potential aftermath of losing Wheatley amid a dip in form on track, but also significant that they felt they needed to promote in-house rather than poach from other teams.

Red Bull no longer focused on the Constructors’ Championship

The key focus for Red Bull in the final seven races of the season will be on retaining the Drivers’ Championship, after Helmut Marko admitted that they have now written off their Constructors’ title chances.

While the Drivers’ title does bring more exposure to the team in terms of marketing, they could potentially be missing out on millions of dollars in prize money.

READ MORE: Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s life outside F1 from net worth to girlfriend

Damon Hill believes there is a chance that Ferrari could leapfrog Red Bull in the title battle, given how both their drivers have been consistently performing compared to Sergio Perez and Verstappen in recent races.

Red Bull is expected to suffer from a ‘massive setback’ in Singapore, with Perez unable to run the latest parts after crashing out of the Azerbaijan GP on the penultimate lap. Whether this is expected to impact their performance on track remains to be seen.