McLaren has snatched up Red Bull’s current Chief Engineering Officer Rob Marshall as its new F1 Technical Director.
McLaren has announced the hiring of a veteran Marshall as its new Technical Director after the departure of James Key. He will be part of the Woking-based F1 team’s technical set-up which includes Peter Prodromou and David Sanchez.
He will report to team principal Andrea Stella and will be supported by Neil Houldey, who has been promoted to be the Deputy Technical Director, Engineering & Design. This completes the current technical structure of McLaren for the time being.
He will join McLaren on January 1 in 2024 and has left his Red Bull’s role with immediate effect. He worked as a chief designer at Milton Keynes between 2006 and 2016, having joined the F1 team in 2005 from Renault.
Post 2016, he took a wider role as the Chief Engineering Officer which included work on Red Bull Powertrains. But now he moves on from Red Bull after 17 years of service to take a more senior role at McLaren from 2024 onward.
“I am incredibly pleased that Rob will be joining McLaren,” said Stella. “With over 25 years working in motorsport, Rob comes to us with a wealth of expertise and experience, elevated by his tenure and track record at Red Bull Racing. Rob’s appointment is one of the fundamental steps and a natural fit to aid the team’s journey to get back to our winning ways.
“We are a team with the ambition of fighting for championships, but over the last couple of seasons we have not shown a steady upward trend from an on-track competitiveness point of view. Over the last few months, we have worked towards inverting this trend. The approach we have adopted is comprehensive and is based on strengthening the Team from a people and expertise point of view, along with the ongoing projects to upgrade technology and infrastructure that will shortly come to fruition.
“People and culture are our most important resource. We have recently invested and worked towards developing and empowering the internal talents available at McLaren, and we already perceive and measure the positive impact. In parallel, we have been strengthening our roster by bringing new talents on board. The list was already strong and encouraging, and the addition of a high-end and skilled individual like Rob will further consolidate our ability to establish the highest technical standards at McLaren and be in condition to design winning F1 cars. We look forward to welcoming Rob in the near future.”
At the same time, Horner added: “We would like to thank Rob for everything he has done for the Team over the past 17 years. His work on the generation of cars that gave us four incredible championship doubles between 2010 and 2013 was truly outstanding.
“In the years since he has continued to be a key figure at the Team and in 2016 took on the broader role of Chief Engineering Officer which has seen him involved in other projects across the business. His influence will be missed but once again we thank him for all he has done and wish him the very best in his new role.”
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