Over the past year, Red Bull has seen a lot of attrition with many of their top engineers joining their rival teams. So amid this technical brain drain at the team, it comes as no surprise that the Milton Keynes-based outfit have fallen down the pecking order.
Having dominated the 2022 and 2023 championships, Red Bull currently find themselves as the third-fastest or even the fourth-fastest team at times. McLaren has now taken over their spot as the pace-setters at the front after clinching their first Constructors’ title since 1998, last season.
While many believe that McLaren team principal Andrea Stella deserves a huge amount of praise for overturning the side’s fortunes, reigning world champion Max Verstappen believes that former Red Bull engineer Rob Marshall also played an equally important role.
The British engineer was at Milton Keynes for 17 long years, and along with legendary aerodynamicist Adrian Newey, he helped Red Bull win eight Drivers’ Championships and six Constructors’ titles. He left Red Bull in January last year and joined McLaren as their new Chief Designer under their revised technical structure.
With Marshall having played a vital role in designing four championship-winning cars for Verstappen, the Dutchman is well aware of how important a role the 57-year-old played at Red Bull. This is why Verstappen has no doubt that Marshall “makes the difference” at McLaren, as they have been leading both championships this season so far.
The 27-year-old also believes that Marshall would have played a huge role in helping McLaren come up with the ingenious idea of flexible wings, which was initially deemed illegal by many of their rivals. Soon after, the FIA introduced new guidelines for how the wings should be designed, which led many to believe that McLaren would be in trouble.
Rob Marshall the king of flexi wings! Meanwhile @redbullracing doing nothing about this! pic.twitter.com/jgqwhlTPsR
— F1Writers™ (@f1writers) April 13, 2025
However, Motorsport reports that McLaren have been so clever in this regard that even after the new guidelines, their car passed the FIA’s static tests, making the wing legal. So, Marshall’s inputs being so effective, it begs the question as to why Red Bull could not retain him.
The British engineer revealed in an interview last year that since he had spent so long at one team that he needed a change, and that McLaren offered him a deal at the perfect time.
“McLaren asked me at the right time. I was at a point where I thought: ‘If I don’t switch to another team now, I’ll probably be here forever.’ I really enjoyed my time at Red Bull, it was a great place to work. But then you get to the stage where you become blasé,” he told PlanetF1 as quoted by Formule1.nl.
So, with Marshall now playing such an important role in McLaren’s recent successes, he would also be key if the team were to continue achieving success next year and beyond when the regulations change.
The Woking-based outfit will hope that they can establish such a strong lead this season that it can give them the opportunity to work on next year’s car, which will have a completely different concept.
