Racing Bulls technical director Egginton to leave F1 team but stay in Red Bull family

Racing Bulls technical director Jody Egginton will leave the Formula 1 squad and move to Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the team has announced.

Egginton will stay within the Red Bull family but his move to Red Bull’s technology arm means his time in F1 will come to an end after a career spanning almost 30 years.

The 51-year-old Briton has served as the Racing Bulls technical director since its Toro Rosso days in 2019. The Anglo-Italian outfit announced Egginton’s departure would be covered by staff already at the team.

Former FIA man Tim Goss, who joined last year as chief technical officer, will take on additional duties, as will his deputies Guillaume Cattelani and Andrea Landi, who head up car performance and design respectively.

“Being part of this team for over 10 years has been a fantastic experience for me, providing some very memorable moments,” said Egginton.

“But after almost 20 years of focusing solely on Formula 1, I feel it’s time for a change. I will have a great remit as Engineering Director of Red Bull Advanced Technologies and the company currently has an exciting list of projects, so I can’t wait to get started on this new challenge.”

Racing Bulls boss Laurent Mekies paid tribute to Egginton, who first joined Toro Rosso in 2014 after stints at Tyrell, various guises of Force India and Lotus. 

“As our long-serving technical director, he has been instrumental in driving innovation and fostering team growth,” he said. “I want to thank Jody for his expertise and the important contribution he has made to the team and the company’s upward trajectory. We wish him all the best for this new challenge within the Red Bull family.”

Egginton leaves a legacy of efficiency and success at Faenza

When James Key relinquished his role as technical director at the team then known as Toro Rosso after agreeing to join McLaren at the start of 2019, Egginton stepped up to the task with his own ideas of how to improve the team’s efficiency.

Toro Rosso had always been birthed with the idea of being Red Bull’s junior operation, but the outlawing of customer cars and subsequent differences in powertrain partners required the Faenza squad to produce its own parts. Suspension packages and gearboxes, for example, needed to be slightly different – and Key’s leadership moved the team towards its own autonomy in the design department.

It was generally successful for a time but, when Red Bull joined Toro Rosso in taking Honda power in 2019, Egginton felt that there was limited value in having resource spent on developing its own kit. Elsewhere on the grid, Haas had shown the value of building a car around common parts shared with Ferrari – why was Toro Rosso doing its own thing when Red Bull Technology was already developing “non-listed” parts that could be shared between teams?

Thus, the Coventry-born engineer figured that the team could simply buy in the components produced at RBT and reallocate personnel and finance to other areas of the car. Immediate success followed as Toro Rosso achieved its highest constructors’ placing in 2019 with sixth, and the follow-up AlphaTauri AT01 as the team rebranded itself claimed Faenza’s second F1 win – its first for 12 years – at Monza. It then finished sixth again in 2021.

Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri AT01, 1st position, takes victory to the delight of his team

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Although the team has not enjoyed as much success after the re-introduction of ground effect aerodynamics, Egginton’s changes have at least ensured that the team had a championship-winning basis to work from in taking parts from Red Bull. A decision to stray from his MO and produce its own front suspension components for the first two years of the 2022-spec regulations was reversed, and this helped put RB into the fight for sixth in last year’s championship.

He might not be one of the most well-known names in the F1 paddock, but Egginton played a significant part in ensuring one of the smallest teams on the grid could punch well above its weight.