Lawson gets new race engineer for 2025 F1 season

Red Bull has named Sergio Perez’s former performance engineer Richard Wood as the new race engineer for incoming Formula 1 driver Liam Lawson in 2025.

Wood garnered experience on the Red Bull pit wall several times during 2024 when Perez’s regular race engineer Hugh Bird was on paternity leave.

A long-term Red Bull employee, Wood joined the team as a strategist before moving into race support and simulator engineering ahead of switching to the trackside team, and now becomes Lawson’s race engineer as the Kiwi steps up to the lead Red Bull-owned team.

This follows a restructuring of Red Bull’s trackside operations following the departure of Jonathan Wheatley. Gianpiero Lambiase – Max Verstappen’s race engineer – has taken up a larger role, as reported by Autosport months ago.

Wheatley will start his new challenge at Sauber on 1 April – earlier than initially planned – and is no longer working for Red Bull. He is serving the mandatory period of gardening leave these months. 

Red Bull is not replacing Wheatley one-on-one, but has divided his tasks among several team members; in one such example, Lambiase is taking on a larger role as head of racing. 

Lambiase remains Verstappen’s race engineer, but has been given more responsibilities that involve the entire team. Lambiase heads the daily ‘race operation’ as well as some strategy operations. 

In terms of strategy, Will Courtenay stays at the Red Bull pit wall this year despite being signed by McLaren last year. The chief strategist will leave for McLaren mid-2026, but Red Bull will not release him earlier.

Another part of Wheatley’s responsibilities will fall under Steve Knowles. He is the head of sporting in the new structure, which among other things involves communication with race control.

Despite Lambiase’s promotion, the engineering team around Verstappen remains intact. This also applies to senior control systems engineer Michael Manning, who has indicated internally that he aspires to a different position. 

Manning and his systems team play an important role in Verstappen’s starts, which have become increasingly complex in modern-day F1. 

However, Red Bull confirmed that Manning will finish the 2025 season in his current role and that he will not move to another team, despite reports that the Irishman was to depart.