After months dominated by headlines about departing personnel – with reports surrounding Paul Monaghan’s expected move to Cadillac still continuing – two more positive stories emerged for Red Bull during the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix weekend.
First of all, the Milton Keynes-based team managed to convince Tom Hart not to complete his move to Williams and instead remain with Red Bull. Hart spent many years as Max Verstappen’s performance engineer and this season has been working in a role covering both cars.
He had been set to become Alex Albon’s race engineer at Williams, but the opportunity to step up to a race engineering role has now also presented itself at Red Bull, linked to Gianpiero Lambiase’s impending departure.
Lambiase will join McLaren in 2028, but he is expected to begin a period of gardening leave before then, meaning Hart is likely to take over as race engineer at the start of 2027 after already deputising on several occasions during the remainder of this season.
On race day at Spa, that news was followed by confirmation that Red Bull will also sign Gwen Lagrue from Mercedes to head its junior programme.
Lagrue is one of the most highly respected talent scouts in the F1 paddock. The Frenchman has spent the past decade at Mercedes, following an earlier stint with Lotus, and was responsible for signing current Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, among others.
Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing Team Principal, with Gianpiero Lambiase
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
After the Belgian Grand Prix, Toto Wolff revealed that Mercedes is currently “in discussions about the future” with Lagrue, which explains why no start date at Red Bull has yet been announced. Mercedes is expected to cover his departure through an internal reshuffle, with team members stressing that Mercedes has around 10 talent scouts continuously searching for young drivers.
Lagrue’s arrival can, in a way, be seen as part of Red Bull’s succession plan for Helmut Marko, who oversaw the junior programme for 25 years before stepping down at the end of last year.
The Austrian played a major role in the success stories of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, and behind the scenes last year was a strong advocate for promoting Isack Hadjar (to Red Bull) and Arvid Lindblad (to F1). Both decisions have worked out well in 2026.
Mekies’ approach: internal promotion plan A, looking elsewhere plan B
Red Bull sees the signing of Lagrue as a statement of intent in two different ways. First, the move underlines the team’s commitment to young drivers, which makes sense considering sister team Racing Bulls and its role in preparing drivers for promotion to Red Bull.
Since Verstappen, the programme has not produced another talent of quite that exceptional level. However, Hadjar’s development this year and Lindblad’s encouraging rookie season at Red Bull show that nurturing its own talents remains the path the team believes in for the future.
With Nikola Tsolov, the next talent is already waiting in the wings – Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane described him at Spa as “the next in line” – but with Lagrue joining, Red Bull is also looking to strengthen the pipeline for the generations that follow.
Red Bull also sees the move as a signal to the outside world that it remains capable of attracting personnel from rival teams. Over recent years, the Milton Keynes outfit has mostly made headlines for losing key figures, resulting in a long list of departures including Rob Marshall, Adrian Newey, Lambiase and Jonathan Wheatley.
Signing Lagrue is therefore viewed internally as proof that Red Bull remains a team capable of luring key personnel away from rivals.
Frederic Vasseur, Team Principal and General Manager, Scuderia Ferrari, in conversation with Gwen Lagrue, Mercedes Driver Development Advisor, Laurent Mekies, Team Principal, RB F1 Team
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
The plans involving Hart and Lagrue are also in line with what Mekies explained in Austria about his way of working at Red Bull. There, the team principal revealed that promoting from within will always be plan A when replacing departing senior figures, but that the team will not hesitate to move to plan B if necessary – namely recruiting external talent.
“When we can, we will always try to see how we can promote internally. We have created a number of talents over the last few years, and we are proud of that. We want to continue that way,” Mekies explained.
“If and when we need to go and get a specific set of skills or experience from some of our dear competitors around the pitlane, we will do it – as we have done before. And that’s how we look at things. We go and give the best chances to our talents and if we need to go elsewhere to inject, we will do it happily.”
This philosophy has been applied to both the race engineer position and the junior programme. Hart can be seen as an internal promotion, although Red Bull first had to reverse his move to Williams in order to make it happen.
Incidentally, Mekies had already hinted at exactly that in Austria, although at the time no one in the press conference room was aware he was referring to Hart.
“If I look at the names that have been circulating in the last few months, most of them are still in the garage,” he said. “Some had never wanted to leave, some have changed their mind and are staying with us.”
While Hart represents an internal promotion, Marko’s succession actually combines both approaches. Guillaume Rocquelin had initially been given an even more prominent role, but the leadership of the junior programme will now be strengthened further with Lagrue. That is because the latter possesses what Mekies described above as “a specific set of skills or experience”.
The Verstappen question: does Red Bull have enough “strength in depth”?
Both moves therefore fit into Mekies’ vision of how he wants to lead the team and guide Red Bull through its transition period. It is a transition in the sense that many of the key figures from the previous era of success have departed, with new faces gradually reshaping the organisation for the future.
The obvious final question is whether it will be enough to keep Verstappen on board. Ultimately, it all comes down to one consideration: which group of people Verstappen himself has the greatest confidence in for the coming years, and where he sees the greatest potential.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull
Photo by: Liam Fabre
McLaren now has several faces familiar to Verstappen, including Marshall, Will Courtenay and, from 2028 onwards, Lambiase. Red Bull, meanwhile, is doing everything it can to provide Verstappen with an environment that remains equally tailored to him.
A few months ago, the four-time world champion revealed that he already had somebody within the team in mind to succeed Lambiase, and indications suggest he was referring to Hart. Red Bull has now succeeded in making that happen by reaching an agreement with Williams.
Should Verstappen ultimately decide to leave, Hart will still take over as Red Bull’s next race engineer, albeit working with a different driver in that scenario.
Mekies, however, hopes it will not come to that and remains convinced that the team still has enough “strength in depth” – as Christian Horner often put it – to return to the front over the coming years.
“On that, I’m extremely confident,” Mekies said when asked about it by Autosport. “We have incredible talent at all levels and therefore we’ll certainly not go and look for an excuse to tell you we are missing A, B or C in order to go back to ultimate competitiveness. We have everything in-house.
“If we need something to complete the equation, we will do it, but we are certainly not limited by the quality of the talents we have.”
Whether Verstappen has enough confidence in Red Bull’s future is a question that only the Dutchman himself can answer.
What is already clear during this period of transition, however, is Mekies and Red Bull’s philosophy for the future – and that is evident in the team’s succession plans for Marko and Lambiase.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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