Christian Horner speaks on Guillaume Rocquelin moving on to leading Red Bull Junior F1 Team, with Gianpiero Lambiase taking over his responsibilities.
Rocquelin is a guy who has been at Red Bull from day one and has shared in all their success stories since their 2006 formation. Prior to entering Grand Prix Racing, he had a stellar career in CART with Chip Ganassi before joining F1 with BAR in their inaugural season.
A return to the States saw him work at PacWest and Newman-Haas and a litany of success there before joining Red Bull. His first 10 seasons there saw him as a Race Engineer working with David Coulthard and was an integral part of Sebastian Vettel’s four titles between 2010 and 2013.
The last number of seasons have seen him head up Race Engineering at Red Bull but this weekend sees the guy affectionately know as Rocky undertake his last tenure at the team with him moving to take up a role where he will be working with the Red Bull Junior Drivers.
It might be deemed a strange time to make such a move, three Grands Prix into the season but team boss Horner elaborates more on the changes where Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will play a dual role where he will also take up the work done by Rocquelin.
“The engineering team is continuing to evolve, and especially as we have to look at efficiencies with the budget cap, and so on,” said Horner. “And I think that Rocky has done an amazing job trackside for us over the last 15 or 16 years in race engineering Sebastian to all of his race victories and World Championships, and obviously, leading the engineering team to last year’s success as well.
“He is going to evolve into 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 and with so much engineering background to continue to develop the Red Bull Junior drivers and very much take a leading role in that project and how they integrate obviously into Red Bull Racing and applying scientific tools to that as well.
“So it’s an exciting new challenge for Rocky. Australia was his last race weekend and now he moves on to that role and the restructure will see GP (Gianpiero Lambiase) 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, and I think that both of the both of the guys are going to excel in their next roles,” summed up Horner.
The focal points are several. Firstly, Red Bull juniors are 100% in safe hands thanks to Rocky’s plethora of experience and success. Lambiase steps into Rocky’s shoes with sufficient ease as he too has an impressive CV up to now. The Red Bull conveyor felt is evolving and moving on all fronts with ease.
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