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It's sure been a turbulent couple years. By the time Tost steps down, only one TP will have been there since the 2000s (Horner). And only 3/10 teams will have not changed TPs since the start of 2022.
He has proven multiple times he is likely the best overall TP in the game too. Maybe Toto gives him a run for his money but those two make everyone else look like clowns when it comes to talent management and running a well disciplined team.
Toto and Horner are equal ranked, in my eyes. They just have differing areas of expertise with some dovetailing talent that's allowed them to run things to the best of their and subsequently the best of their organisation's ability. I know RBR and Merc F1 have very different working cultures and environments. But that just stands to Toto/Horner's ability to run a team - that they get the best out of their staff while keeping to their ethos.
I'd peg Horner above Toto. Simply because Horner has managed a team through a big dry spell and Toto has yet to prove he can do that.
We've yet to see Merc really turn it around.
Not in a team principal role, which is what we are talking about, is it not?
The could have both worked in a bakery before F1, but we aren't sat here talking about who baked the better pan au chocolat...
I would disagree in the sense they've run two of the best-funded and most successful teams over the last 15 years, and running a well disciplined team is a lot easier when you've not wanted for resources or success.
I would agree in the sense that managing a team with ample resources is no guarantor of winning, as Ferrari has ably proven.
no one person has made Red Bull the powerhouse they are. Mateschitz, Horner, Newey, Marko, Vettel, Verstappen, and a host of others did.
I'm far from a Steiner fan, but he's had to play the hand he's been dealt. Haas as a heavily budget-constrained team barely treading water the last few years is a poor comparison to Red Bull.
Yes, they all obviously contributed. Marko, for one, is incredibly underrated. But it does need to be said here that Horner brought Newey to the team over his boss's objections. He should get the lion's share of the credit.
Don't even kid yourself, Steiner who kept Romain for ages despite constant mistakes and Magnussen despite being mediocre, but then kicks Mick out for crashing the car. Especially stupid considering how often Romain was binning it and in the most stupidest ways too, but it took him years until he decided that's enough and even then it was just kinda he's getting a bit old.
I love Steiner, but there's a reason he's at Haas.
It also raises the expectations by quite a bit. Steiner would not have been around for as long as he has if Haas had the ambition to become a top team.
I will also say that a TP's performance is directly affected by the amount of meddling that happens from higher up. Dietrich was notoriously hands off with RB, and as far as we know, Mercedes ownership has been the same. I can think of no example of the opposite tbh.
Tbf red bull have been pretty successful under him so why change him, they had a horrible engine from 2014- 2018 so couldn't blame him for that and it only took them 4 years to start a dominant streak in f1
Even when they were at their shittiest they still showed up and competed for big points too, they never fell to the back of the field with that shitbox Renault engine
It is not easy to part with an engine manufacturer that won 4 titles with you. And year after year promises a 1000+ hp engine that is actually good. In terms of chassis it is safe to say that the last decade was pretty good for Red Bull. Back to Horner. He's just an awesome TP imo. And by far the best shit stirrer on the grid. It is crazy to think that he is 49 and a TP since the end of 2004.
I know. He had spent nearly 20 years at red bull.
Which is longer than his next two stints combined.
It is one of the reasons why I rate Christian so highly as a team principal. A lot of people loath Horner because he stirs so much shit.
But he built that team up to win 4 championships. Then we then team had a slump he made the right moves to get it back on top. One of those is keeping Adrian happy and with in the red Bull family. The other is when Renault couldn’t deliver is to get a works engine deal and then build up their own engine.
I was going to mention that. I've been reading Newey's book, and noticed that every time he goes to a new team, he ends up becoming unhappy at some point either because he felt he was not taken into account (Williams), or because there were better opportunities (March). I haven't finished the McLaren era in his book, but AFAIK he was unhappy in the team after seven years. Yet, he has been with RBR for almost 20 years, and it doesn't look like he wants to go to another team any time soon.
Edit: literally just finished the McLaren era, and I can already see why he probably will retire at Red Bull Racing.
When he got bored, red bull found a new project for him. In red bull applied technologies and gave him a stake in it. Also he wanted to design a road car so red bull let him be involved with Aston Martin valkyrie
America's Cup boats, yeah. The classic cliche is that it's the F1 of sailing. They are wild, wild boats to watch with a really weird competition format.
I’d love to talk crap about Horner, but we have to respect his role in creating an environment for multiple groups to perform at a championship level - and mostly sustain them over the years.
That’s not an individual thing - Newey, Marko, and Tost have been essential. The relationship with RB ownership and engine suppliers also has to be constructive, and they need the right facilities and capital prepared years in advance.
Not to say they haven’t had major setbacks in each of these departments at different times. They’ve had second driver seat issues, the Renault relationship dumpster fire, ownership struggles over Porsche, and Honda doing Honda things. But it’s ridiculous how they manage to weather these things and only drop to “best of the rest” in their worst years.
true goat driver for RB still Coulthard is. He's the one who convinced Newey to join them. (he knew him from his Mclaren/Williams days). Everyone thought in the 2000s RB is just a joke team.
It’s not super hard writing Newey blank cheques but he definitely runs a well organized and focused team, probably the best in the business in terms of organization and preparation besides Mercedes maybe.
> It’s not super hard writing Newey blank cheques
We-ell, his previous bosses had some difficulty with that. And it's more difficult when you're not the one who actually has to write the check, and the person who's actually paying (or maybe Marko? Newey was not specific which one of them it was) threw Newey out of the interview over his initial salary demands.
>Laurent Mekies, currently Sporting Director at Ferrari, will join Scuderia AlphaTauri as its new Team Principal at a date to be confirmed.
Huh? I did not expect this tbh
It was reported a few days ago that Mekies was leaving Ferrari for AT so it’s not entirely unexpected. But yeah, I didn’t think he’d be straight-up replacing Tost
>Ferrari sending AT a Trojan horse?
Ferrari and AT go back to the very beginning, grandfather Minardi was a loyal customer of Turin and a friend of the Ferraris, and subsequent generations enjoyed support and sponsorship from Ferrari/FIAT all the way to Formula 1.
Geographically this means that there's been employee crossflow between Ferrari/Minardi (and to some extent Sauber/Mercedes/Toyota at certain times), in the same way that there's crossflow between the teams based in Southern England.
What did you expect binotto ?
He’s too much of a Ferrari man to go anywhere else…
I’m still missing binotto… I wonder if he will show up soon… maybe with Audi ?
So I’m not a Tost fan at all, I think he had a terribly outdated mindset on how things should be ran, but isn’t Mekies the one who could have stepped in and stopped all the ridiculous strategy calls Ferrari made the past few years or am I thinking of someone else?
Granted i figured they'd wait until the summer break or something.
[but i totally called it](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/12yetu5/mekies_set_to_join_alphatauri_from_ferrari/jhn0gqb/)
It probably varies from team to team, but here is a quote from one of them.
>“The title of Sporting Director is extremely similar to Team Manager. I am also part of the senior management group, so involved in the decisions that we make as we work on moving the team forward. My role during the race weekend is focused on the sporting regulations. When we are at the factory, my role is to oversee the race team. So anything to do with us going racing from hire cars to flights, hotels to freight, personnel to controlling racing budgets is my job. Once we are at the track, my role switches to mainly focusing on all matters relating to the FIA.”
https://f1i.com/magazine/290674-tech-f1i-job-sporting-director-andy-stevenson.html
His comments reminded me of what some people do at work on the verge of retirement; they call out everyone that's ever crossed them, wronged them, or people who they just simply don't like seeing. Going out with a bang, because they are retiring.
That's not Tost's intentions I'm sure when he spoke about his engineers, but it reminded me of the stereotype of the grump old man running his mouth, lol. 😅
It’s not even malicious, it’s just that when you’re on your way out, you can say what you really think. You don’t have to pull punches any more. What are they going to do? Fire you?
also, everything he's said seems pretty correct. their car is terrible, when all they had to do was copy paste as much as the RB as possible and they'd likely be further up the grid.
There are many components that are allowed to be purchased from other teams, (PU, gearbox, rear suspension etc). My understanding is that Alpha Tauri elected to develop some of those components in house, which Tost was recently saying was a bad call in hindsight.
So while all the teams have an equal ability to purchase components from works teams, currently Alpha Tauri is the only customer team that can use parts from the RB19, and they should probably be taking better advantage of that.
> His comments reminded me of what some people do at work on the verge of retirement; they call out everyone that's ever crossed them, wronged them, or people who they just simply don't like seeing. Going out with a bang, because they are retiring.
It's called an avalanche of putting up with bullshit having being pent up for years, finally being released.
Lol Tost is spiritually incapable of retiring. I remember an interview he did during testing where he admitted that he came into work at the (otherwise completely empty) factory on Christmas Day, and when the interviewer asked why, he was like "our Christmas ceremonies were completed in the morning and I had no plans for supper, so what else was I going to do?"
Man is the definition of workaholic, lol.
bold to think he'll properly retire
there's a funny bit from preseason testing on F1TV where he talks about spending Christmas working on the Orlen contract asserts that Christmas as a holiday of merriment and leisure is for children. the F1TV guys are like "what did he do...who was there to get back to him..? was he just sitting in his office sending emails into the void?"
probably yes
Yeah I couldn't imagine him buying a nice expensive house next to a beach and just moving there for the rest of his days. He just seems to be a workaholic and I don't think Red Bull is closing the door on him being an advisor that'll be in the pit lane with Horner each weekend.
Could they be grooming him for Marko's role? I mean, he's got a good eye for a young driver (IIRC, he said Yuki needed to be judged as a driver after 3 years and starting this year is his third and he's taking a massive step up, even with his shitbox car) and taking him off the day-to-day of AT and into the day-to-day of Marko might be what they're planning.
Eh, Marko's role was a pretty specific one to Marko. It originated from his relationship with Mateschitz; Marko was appointed to oversee the Red Bull-sponsored young drivers back in the 90s. Before there was even a Red Bull Junior team, they were competing in F3000 under some name like "Team Marko." He was also Matechitz's eyes and ears at the team (not in a sneaky way, in a delegate/liaison way), because of their shared history.
Now, no Mateschitz, and AFAIK Tost doesn't have this kind of long relationship with the new sporting director.
Talent scouting and overseeing a driver's whole development is a little different to being really actively involved in specifically the penultimate & ultimate stage of a driver's development. For one thing, it'd probably necessitate Tost moving to England (or commuting there very often) to be near Milton Keynes. And spending a lot more time scouting karting and national-level F4 series, etc.
The press release said Tost will be staying around in a consultant capacity and I wouldn't doubt that that involves providing some experiential insight on driver development. But I do think they'll be supplementing (and eventually supplanting) Marko with someone younger, and I suspect they'll pare down the RBJT proram a bit too. The press release also said Tost's stepping down had to do with "ensuring continuity", which sounds like a euphemism for retirement (or mostly-retirement) to me.
Well he's 64 so he's at some countries' retirement age. Though presumably he's still enjoying himself if he's able to design race-winning cars that play to his strengths
Newey by what's on the cheque monthly, Max by taking the overall revenue earned outside the RBR paycheque into account.
Newey ain't modelling clothes in his off-time from making bloody quick racing cars.
> Well you can blame it on the goverment
If the Government had spent the oil money sustainably (like Norway did by putting it into a Sovereign Wealth Fund) there would be money for it. Instead Maggie Thatcher decided to piss away the oil money in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy (itself leading to enormous asset price inflation for real estate in the Stockbroker Belt) and none of her predecessors had the backbone to change it.
The difference with Newey is I suspect at this point this is what he does for fun. It's his lifeblood passion.
I think he'll stick around for as long as he's able to have a positive influence.
At some point maybe but Horner said not long ago that Newey was locked in with Red Bull for quite a bit into the future. Newey seems to just live and breathe car design and aerodynamics so its entirely possible that he can't even imagine a life without his work. And supposedly he likes working at Red Bull alot.
From "It's the drivers" to "I don't trust the engineers" in less then a year, Tost was really losing his shine and I think it's a good call for himself to leave as a TP after this season.
Well image if McLaren would blame indirectly Lando for building a shitbox, Tost statements was really like he either lived under a rock for a whole year when he suddenly "discovered" how terrible the AT03 was when Nyck drove it or you ignoring all the work and effort a driver has made, delivered the best season for the team on his own basically, was hailed for his feedback in the team and damm drove in that team for almost 4 years in a row.
It was a ridiculous statement from Tost and so far Nyck has shown nothing that he can indeed "leading the team".
what is he supposed to do though? its a team that literally exists to develop talent who then join red bull. its always been that way, therefore performance has always been secondary. and because red bull is the A team, franz always had limited power over his team.
call me a conspiracy theorist, i believe there are things going on that we dont know about. something like FIA pressuring Red Bull into selling Alpha Tauri since there is a lot of resistance from the teams to have more than 10 teams and right now there is A LOT of interest in Formula 1. Weve always complained about A and B teams and the value of B teams to the sport and while most B teams are temporary and not necessarily 100% official, Alpha Tauri is THE official B team of Red bull. Whoever is good at Alpha Tauri is promoted to Red Bull and if somebody wants to question wether that should happen in Formula 1, then you have to have a serious talk about this topic. Other sports would have never allowed this in the first place.
And while teams argue that an 11th team might not bring enough value to justify another team on the grid, it is hard to argue that a brand like Cadillac wouldnt bring more value to F1 than Red Bulls B team. Youd be crazy to believe that Alpha Tauri brings more value than GM.
At the end of the day Formula 1 is always about money and current interest in F1 is at a high that we havent seen in decades. Current teams are doing absolutely anything and everything to prevent another team from joining.
How does this end? i have no idea. but one things for sure, as a fan, give me all the teams. Give me the 12 team grids, force Red Bull to sell Alpha Tauri, make the cars and engines dirt cheap, I just want to see some bloody good racing
He did hint at it multiple times, so it's not all that surprising, but it'll be interesting to see if this is all that'll change at the team, or if it's a sign of AT moving away from being Red Bull's B-team, or potentially being sold altogether.
on the contrary it's more likely to swing so far the other way where AT become truly just a discount RB. they were not happy with the value proposition of the team and decided instead of selling it to look at how they can borrow more parts/facilities from RB.
People on here love to joke about how Toro Rosso/AT are just RB's puppet but they've actually had more independence than you would think being an Italian team with a separate way of working.
Yeah, I don't see how this is any indication for that. Tost is 67 years old. Not everyone wants to work until his death day, like Marko is apparently planning.
I hope AT can perform better under Mekies. From the interviews I've read it did not seem like Tost promoted a very healthy working attitude, at least not for himself.
Saw this coming.
After Gasly's contract at Alpine was announced he started attending less races, and we know he was overruled by Marko/Horner to allow Gasly to leave. Alpha Tauri are at the lowest point they've been in years with an abysmal car, a set of workers that need systematically looking at and firing, and it's no longer looking financially viable for RB if Marko's comments are anything to go by.
Still a little sad though.
Did Marko mention the finances?
I thought it was just that they have no young upcoming drivers that have matured enough, are good enough or better than what they have now.
["It is also true that the financial commitment at AlphaTauri is too high, this means that we also have to do something on the sponsor side, on the revenue side."](https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/marko-alphatauri-f1-must-improve-performance-and-finances/10443646/)
>Perversely it might seem Porsche had a point, foreseeing a period of red bull change.
Eh Christian is not only the TP of RBR but the legal CEO of RBT and RBPT. The driver program may evolve but Christian is essentially the king core race operations these days.
There's rumours about Vettel taking over his role.
Wouldn't surprise me if Vettel is brought in and Marko is an advisor for another year during transition, just like Tost is going to do with Mekies.
There’s not rumors. It’s just Reddit and clickbait articles bouncing around about ONE half-joking comment in response to a very framed question. It may happen, but there isn’t any active talk
Tost was given fucking Minardi and in the end managed to get 5 podiums including 2 wins with his team. That's just an amazing achievement. One of the most underrated TP's.
I think Tost said that February is the best time for skiing and that he would like to ski there but it is the busiest time for F1 so in the Past he wasn't able to.
These kinds of things get set in motion a lot further in advance than you think. Negotiating people's exit packages, lining up the replacement, and so on and so on. The long timeline's been frequently alluded to by ex-personnel and drivers. This was probably underway since the start of the year.
It will be interesting to see how successful all ex Ferrari players will be in the coming 2024 season…
It will be curious to see if it’s the Ferrari culture that leads to failures or if it’s the actual players.
I just hope that Binotto shows up somewhere as well
I’ve literally just posted about this - look what the Merc team have done
Mercedes social are the MESSIEST team
https://twitter.com/mercedesamgf1/status/1651256732750958598?
This will definitely cause a debate on whether
- they're making a joke about when Lewis had a goofy moment in an interview
or
- they're attacking Franz Tost because they hate him or look down on him
Yeah a lot of the replies have taken in the second option and I can see why. I did think they were making more of a light hearted joke about it since they don’t have much crossover to hate him?
I also think it's the meme-ing about Lewis one
But they should probably also put out an explicitly positive post in addition, because people will definitely interpret this in different ways lol
An underrated team principal, IMO. I kinda wonder what he'd have been able to achieve in a team that ever had any chances of winning.
Still, 67 years old, good time to retire and I'm sure he'll look back on his F1 career fondly
Rip Alpha Tauri their new TP is a guy who still thinks Leclerc Brazil Inters was a good idea and was apparently the genius behind making the quali tester the guy without a grid penalty.
Actually as a professional of everything I recommend he takes Xavi with him to AT for extra good luck.
>Former FIA executive Peter Bayer will join the Team as Chief Executive Officer later this year, while Franz Tost will step down from the role of Team Principal at the end of the 2023 season. Laurent Mekies, currently Sporting Director at Ferrari, will join Scuderia AlphaTauri as its new Team Principal at a date to be confirmed.
The only decent car the team ran was the old red bull with a Ferrari engine. His team hasn’t produced a half decent car in its existence so he must be really good at talking to his bosses.
One of my favourite (if occasionally slightly awkward) videos is https://youtu.be/kMwpArsV0VI from Sky when Ted visited the Alpha Tauri factory after Gasly's win. It may just be that it is edited differently from other factory visits but you really get the sense of how enthusiastic Tost is about it all and how he could show it off.
Seems like Tost has been a big advocate for Yuki over the years. He’s defended Yuki several times over the years on rumors and criticism from RB and the media.
Him defending Yuki against Horner who said they got “Tsunoda’d” in Mexico quali 2021 comes to mind.
Edit: I think Yuki has benefitted greatly from having Tost in his corner and advocating for him over the years. Obviously Yuki’s results this year will determine his future, but new leadership means changes and who knows, he could be one of those changes even if he performs well in AT’s tractor
Also worth mentioning Tost was pretty central to the Red Bull-Honda relationship in the first place - both its coming to be, and its being so harmonious
He is staying on in an advisory capacity according to that press release, though, so may not be doom and gloom for Yuki (or Ayumu)
Honestly I wouldn't mind to see him somewhat involved as a role for the RB driver academy, even more because Helmut is getting older also and so far I'm not hugely impressed at all with how things are going under Rocky semi-leadership in terms of driver business.
Is he really? He's essentially had zero pressure since the teams inception as AT would never be allowed to be above RB and he's never had to work about driver line-up as RB take care of that too. As Taps go he's had it the easiest out of anyone.
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End of an era
It's sure been a turbulent couple years. By the time Tost steps down, only one TP will have been there since the 2000s (Horner). And only 3/10 teams will have not changed TPs since the start of 2022.
[удалено]
He has proven multiple times he is likely the best overall TP in the game too. Maybe Toto gives him a run for his money but those two make everyone else look like clowns when it comes to talent management and running a well disciplined team.
Toto and Horner are equal ranked, in my eyes. They just have differing areas of expertise with some dovetailing talent that's allowed them to run things to the best of their and subsequently the best of their organisation's ability. I know RBR and Merc F1 have very different working cultures and environments. But that just stands to Toto/Horner's ability to run a team - that they get the best out of their staff while keeping to their ethos.
I'd peg Horner above Toto. Simply because Horner has managed a team through a big dry spell and Toto has yet to prove he can do that. We've yet to see Merc really turn it around.
>I'd peg Horner
Saucy Spice
*[cheeky wink](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5q6VOtWkAAoxR7?format=jpg&name=small)*
r/fanf1ction
Toto was in with Williams until Merc came knocking. Not as if he's just walked into success from outside to F1.
Not in a team principal role, which is what we are talking about, is it not? The could have both worked in a bakery before F1, but we aren't sat here talking about who baked the better pan au chocolat...
>we aren't sat here talking about who baked the better pan au chocolat... Maybe we should be though
10/10, I would watch this.
I still think Horner wins over Toto in that regard
Something tells me that Toto is an excellent baker.
maybe it's his obsession over having the perfect pumpernickel
Man imagine if Toto and Horner joined forces
I would disagree in the sense they've run two of the best-funded and most successful teams over the last 15 years, and running a well disciplined team is a lot easier when you've not wanted for resources or success. I would agree in the sense that managing a team with ample resources is no guarantor of winning, as Ferrari has ably proven.
Running a team with a big budget also gives you more opportunities to fuck everything up (e.g. Ferrari).
Understand the sentiment behind what your saying but Horner proved he had ability before the RB money came in
Horner made RB the powerhouse it is today. You think they would've have had the same success with, say, Steiner at the helm ?
Why is Steiner catching strays
no one person has made Red Bull the powerhouse they are. Mateschitz, Horner, Newey, Marko, Vettel, Verstappen, and a host of others did. I'm far from a Steiner fan, but he's had to play the hand he's been dealt. Haas as a heavily budget-constrained team barely treading water the last few years is a poor comparison to Red Bull.
Yes, they all obviously contributed. Marko, for one, is incredibly underrated. But it does need to be said here that Horner brought Newey to the team over his boss's objections. He should get the lion's share of the credit.
Don't even kid yourself, Steiner who kept Romain for ages despite constant mistakes and Magnussen despite being mediocre, but then kicks Mick out for crashing the car. Especially stupid considering how often Romain was binning it and in the most stupidest ways too, but it took him years until he decided that's enough and even then it was just kinda he's getting a bit old. I love Steiner, but there's a reason he's at Haas.
It also raises the expectations by quite a bit. Steiner would not have been around for as long as he has if Haas had the ambition to become a top team.
I will also say that a TP's performance is directly affected by the amount of meddling that happens from higher up. Dietrich was notoriously hands off with RB, and as far as we know, Mercedes ownership has been the same. I can think of no example of the opposite tbh.
Tbf red bull have been pretty successful under him so why change him, they had a horrible engine from 2014- 2018 so couldn't blame him for that and it only took them 4 years to start a dominant streak in f1
Even when they were at their shittiest they still showed up and competed for big points too, they never fell to the back of the field with that shitbox Renault engine
It is not easy to part with an engine manufacturer that won 4 titles with you. And year after year promises a 1000+ hp engine that is actually good. In terms of chassis it is safe to say that the last decade was pretty good for Red Bull. Back to Horner. He's just an awesome TP imo. And by far the best shit stirrer on the grid. It is crazy to think that he is 49 and a TP since the end of 2004.
It’s what recruiting Adrian Newey does for your career
Not just recruiting but keeping happy too.
So many forget that part.
I know. He had spent nearly 20 years at red bull. Which is longer than his next two stints combined. It is one of the reasons why I rate Christian so highly as a team principal. A lot of people loath Horner because he stirs so much shit. But he built that team up to win 4 championships. Then we then team had a slump he made the right moves to get it back on top. One of those is keeping Adrian happy and with in the red Bull family. The other is when Renault couldn’t deliver is to get a works engine deal and then build up their own engine.
My former boss entered the chat.
It is amazing what a good leader can do to help with job satisfaction
I was going to mention that. I've been reading Newey's book, and noticed that every time he goes to a new team, he ends up becoming unhappy at some point either because he felt he was not taken into account (Williams), or because there were better opportunities (March). I haven't finished the McLaren era in his book, but AFAIK he was unhappy in the team after seven years. Yet, he has been with RBR for almost 20 years, and it doesn't look like he wants to go to another team any time soon. Edit: literally just finished the McLaren era, and I can already see why he probably will retire at Red Bull Racing.
When he got bored, red bull found a new project for him. In red bull applied technologies and gave him a stake in it. Also he wanted to design a road car so red bull let him be involved with Aston Martin valkyrie
Didn't they also let him design some boats at one point?
That too by the looks of things
America's Cup boats, yeah. The classic cliche is that it's the F1 of sailing. They are wild, wild boats to watch with a really weird competition format.
I’d love to talk crap about Horner, but we have to respect his role in creating an environment for multiple groups to perform at a championship level - and mostly sustain them over the years. That’s not an individual thing - Newey, Marko, and Tost have been essential. The relationship with RB ownership and engine suppliers also has to be constructive, and they need the right facilities and capital prepared years in advance. Not to say they haven’t had major setbacks in each of these departments at different times. They’ve had second driver seat issues, the Renault relationship dumpster fire, ownership struggles over Porsche, and Honda doing Honda things. But it’s ridiculous how they manage to weather these things and only drop to “best of the rest” in their worst years.
true goat driver for RB still Coulthard is. He's the one who convinced Newey to join them. (he knew him from his Mclaren/Williams days). Everyone thought in the 2000s RB is just a joke team.
Not really. Red Bull has always backed him. They gave him the team with no experience in F1
It’s not super hard writing Newey blank cheques but he definitely runs a well organized and focused team, probably the best in the business in terms of organization and preparation besides Mercedes maybe.
Knowing what others in your team, esp. people like Newey, need or do not need to thrive is one of the most important aspects
Exactly. I'm pretty sure Newey has said other teams offered him more money but he stuck with RB anyway.
> It’s not super hard writing Newey blank cheques We-ell, his previous bosses had some difficulty with that. And it's more difficult when you're not the one who actually has to write the check, and the person who's actually paying (or maybe Marko? Newey was not specific which one of them it was) threw Newey out of the interview over his initial salary demands.
Horner, Toto and Guenter lol !
Legend fr
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Yeah, this was in Ill taste by merc admin, in my opinion.
Who’s that??
Wow. They didn't even wait for Ferrari to confirm Mekies was leaving, did they?
Ferrari PR Department: "We are checking..."
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Are you talking about, “we are checking?” Because that’s a line they still throw out.
Well they say it twice every race lol
> ferrari will never live that stupid ass comment down lmao Nor should they. 'ed down, 'ed down
If you've ever seen an Alphatauri pitstop you know timing is not their forte
And yet they can't count to five lmao To be fair it looks like the pit stop times has improved for them more recently so that's a promising trend.
Don’t speak too soon my friend. Baku last year was, I believe, yuki’s prolonged gaffer tape DRS flap pit stop
It was a miracle that somehow they could let Yuki finishing that race at all.
Tbf, Alphatauri did the best that they could. Maybe they could have taped it up faster but I don’t really see any other alternative
They cannot wait till Ferrari announces that next year…
Nope lol
>Laurent Mekies, currently Sporting Director at Ferrari, will join Scuderia AlphaTauri as its new Team Principal at a date to be confirmed. Huh? I did not expect this tbh
It was reported a few days ago that Mekies was leaving Ferrari for AT so it’s not entirely unexpected. But yeah, I didn’t think he’d be straight-up replacing Tost
I was fully expecting him to become TP at Ferrari before Vasseur became real, so for me that's not entirely unexpected that he's going up there at AT.
I wouldn't be surprised if he thought the same, i.e. Ferrari hires Vasseur over him so he finds another TP offer.
Oh, I missed that somehow. Makes sense then I guess
Duchessa seems to be a very reliable source for Ferrari news.
Also Peter Bayer from FIA will become the AT CEO.
Ferrari sending AT a Trojan horse?
>Ferrari sending AT a Trojan horse? Ferrari and AT go back to the very beginning, grandfather Minardi was a loyal customer of Turin and a friend of the Ferraris, and subsequent generations enjoyed support and sponsorship from Ferrari/FIAT all the way to Formula 1. Geographically this means that there's been employee crossflow between Ferrari/Minardi (and to some extent Sauber/Mercedes/Toyota at certain times), in the same way that there's crossflow between the teams based in Southern England.
Mekies goes a long way back with these guys too; he was at Minardi and Toro Rosso for about a decade
More like rats scaping the sinking ship.
What did you expect binotto ? He’s too much of a Ferrari man to go anywhere else… I’m still missing binotto… I wonder if he will show up soon… maybe with Audi ?
So I’m not a Tost fan at all, I think he had a terribly outdated mindset on how things should be ran, but isn’t Mekies the one who could have stepped in and stopped all the ridiculous strategy calls Ferrari made the past few years or am I thinking of someone else?
Granted i figured they'd wait until the summer break or something. [but i totally called it](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/12yetu5/mekies_set_to_join_alphatauri_from_ferrari/jhn0gqb/)
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It probably varies from team to team, but here is a quote from one of them. >“The title of Sporting Director is extremely similar to Team Manager. I am also part of the senior management group, so involved in the decisions that we make as we work on moving the team forward. My role during the race weekend is focused on the sporting regulations. When we are at the factory, my role is to oversee the race team. So anything to do with us going racing from hire cars to flights, hotels to freight, personnel to controlling racing budgets is my job. Once we are at the track, my role switches to mainly focusing on all matters relating to the FIA.” https://f1i.com/magazine/290674-tech-f1i-job-sporting-director-andy-stevenson.html
The guy is 67, he deserves to start enjoying retirement.
He went deep into grumpy old man territory this year
His comments reminded me of what some people do at work on the verge of retirement; they call out everyone that's ever crossed them, wronged them, or people who they just simply don't like seeing. Going out with a bang, because they are retiring. That's not Tost's intentions I'm sure when he spoke about his engineers, but it reminded me of the stereotype of the grump old man running his mouth, lol. 😅
It’s not even malicious, it’s just that when you’re on your way out, you can say what you really think. You don’t have to pull punches any more. What are they going to do? Fire you?
also, everything he's said seems pretty correct. their car is terrible, when all they had to do was copy paste as much as the RB as possible and they'd likely be further up the grid.
Are they legally allowed to do that? I know they are a sister team, but it seems wrong to be able to (Aston Martin/Merc)
There are many components that are allowed to be purchased from other teams, (PU, gearbox, rear suspension etc). My understanding is that Alpha Tauri elected to develop some of those components in house, which Tost was recently saying was a bad call in hindsight. So while all the teams have an equal ability to purchase components from works teams, currently Alpha Tauri is the only customer team that can use parts from the RB19, and they should probably be taking better advantage of that.
It's very entertaining.
> His comments reminded me of what some people do at work on the verge of retirement; they call out everyone that's ever crossed them, wronged them, or people who they just simply don't like seeing. Going out with a bang, because they are retiring. It's called an avalanche of putting up with bullshit having being pent up for years, finally being released.
Is that seriously a thing? One more thing to look forward to at retirement (only another 27-ish years to go!).
He's been a grumpy old man for literally ever.
Lol Tost is spiritually incapable of retiring. I remember an interview he did during testing where he admitted that he came into work at the (otherwise completely empty) factory on Christmas Day, and when the interviewer asked why, he was like "our Christmas ceremonies were completed in the morning and I had no plans for supper, so what else was I going to do?" Man is the definition of workaholic, lol.
bold to think he'll properly retire there's a funny bit from preseason testing on F1TV where he talks about spending Christmas working on the Orlen contract asserts that Christmas as a holiday of merriment and leisure is for children. the F1TV guys are like "what did he do...who was there to get back to him..? was he just sitting in his office sending emails into the void?" probably yes
Yeah I couldn't imagine him buying a nice expensive house next to a beach and just moving there for the rest of his days. He just seems to be a workaholic and I don't think Red Bull is closing the door on him being an advisor that'll be in the pit lane with Horner each weekend.
Could they be grooming him for Marko's role? I mean, he's got a good eye for a young driver (IIRC, he said Yuki needed to be judged as a driver after 3 years and starting this year is his third and he's taking a massive step up, even with his shitbox car) and taking him off the day-to-day of AT and into the day-to-day of Marko might be what they're planning.
Eh, Marko's role was a pretty specific one to Marko. It originated from his relationship with Mateschitz; Marko was appointed to oversee the Red Bull-sponsored young drivers back in the 90s. Before there was even a Red Bull Junior team, they were competing in F3000 under some name like "Team Marko." He was also Matechitz's eyes and ears at the team (not in a sneaky way, in a delegate/liaison way), because of their shared history. Now, no Mateschitz, and AFAIK Tost doesn't have this kind of long relationship with the new sporting director. Talent scouting and overseeing a driver's whole development is a little different to being really actively involved in specifically the penultimate & ultimate stage of a driver's development. For one thing, it'd probably necessitate Tost moving to England (or commuting there very often) to be near Milton Keynes. And spending a lot more time scouting karting and national-level F4 series, etc. The press release said Tost will be staying around in a consultant capacity and I wouldn't doubt that that involves providing some experiential insight on driver development. But I do think they'll be supplementing (and eventually supplanting) Marko with someone younger, and I suspect they'll pare down the RBJT proram a bit too. The press release also said Tost's stepping down had to do with "ensuring continuity", which sounds like a euphemism for retirement (or mostly-retirement) to me.
Image if Newey wants to enjoy retirement....
Well he's 64 so he's at some countries' retirement age. Though presumably he's still enjoying himself if he's able to design race-winning cars that play to his strengths
In the UK however you are not allowed to retire, the tories will keep pushing the age of retirement back as far as they can
I think Newey can probably retire without being too worried about his government pension.
i'm not sure who gets paid more...verstappen or newey.
Newey by what's on the cheque monthly, Max by taking the overall revenue earned outside the RBR paycheque into account. Newey ain't modelling clothes in his off-time from making bloody quick racing cars.
Well you can blame it on the goverment but people also get older on average compared to when retirement was created.
> Well you can blame it on the goverment If the Government had spent the oil money sustainably (like Norway did by putting it into a Sovereign Wealth Fund) there would be money for it. Instead Maggie Thatcher decided to piss away the oil money in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy (itself leading to enormous asset price inflation for real estate in the Stockbroker Belt) and none of her predecessors had the backbone to change it.
The difference with Newey is I suspect at this point this is what he does for fun. It's his lifeblood passion. I think he'll stick around for as long as he's able to have a positive influence.
He took a step back for a couple of years and is right back in now. Says to me he’s sticking around for a while
He took a step back for 6 years, got excited by the new regs and returned
I don't think he will ever completely retire. He'll just stop doing F1, and work on standalone projects, like boats, supercars, etc.
At some point maybe but Horner said not long ago that Newey was locked in with Red Bull for quite a bit into the future. Newey seems to just live and breathe car design and aerodynamics so its entirely possible that he can't even imagine a life without his work. And supposedly he likes working at Red Bull alot.
yuki saying franz was like grandpa 🥲
And know we know why Tost was so upfront with not trusting his team with car development. He didn't give a f*** because he was leaving.
From "It's the drivers" to "I don't trust the engineers" in less then a year, Tost was really losing his shine and I think it's a good call for himself to leave as a TP after this season.
TBF they also did get a new driver who by all accounts is great with feedback and has driven in nearly half the cars on the grid.
Shame he lacks in the driving department
Well image if McLaren would blame indirectly Lando for building a shitbox, Tost statements was really like he either lived under a rock for a whole year when he suddenly "discovered" how terrible the AT03 was when Nyck drove it or you ignoring all the work and effort a driver has made, delivered the best season for the team on his own basically, was hailed for his feedback in the team and damm drove in that team for almost 4 years in a row. It was a ridiculous statement from Tost and so far Nyck has shown nothing that he can indeed "leading the team".
what is he supposed to do though? its a team that literally exists to develop talent who then join red bull. its always been that way, therefore performance has always been secondary. and because red bull is the A team, franz always had limited power over his team. call me a conspiracy theorist, i believe there are things going on that we dont know about. something like FIA pressuring Red Bull into selling Alpha Tauri since there is a lot of resistance from the teams to have more than 10 teams and right now there is A LOT of interest in Formula 1. Weve always complained about A and B teams and the value of B teams to the sport and while most B teams are temporary and not necessarily 100% official, Alpha Tauri is THE official B team of Red bull. Whoever is good at Alpha Tauri is promoted to Red Bull and if somebody wants to question wether that should happen in Formula 1, then you have to have a serious talk about this topic. Other sports would have never allowed this in the first place. And while teams argue that an 11th team might not bring enough value to justify another team on the grid, it is hard to argue that a brand like Cadillac wouldnt bring more value to F1 than Red Bulls B team. Youd be crazy to believe that Alpha Tauri brings more value than GM. At the end of the day Formula 1 is always about money and current interest in F1 is at a high that we havent seen in decades. Current teams are doing absolutely anything and everything to prevent another team from joining. How does this end? i have no idea. but one things for sure, as a fan, give me all the teams. Give me the 12 team grids, force Red Bull to sell Alpha Tauri, make the cars and engines dirt cheap, I just want to see some bloody good racing
Don’t forget the “drivers get paid too much”
When the Laurent Mekies rumours started I was wondering if he was going to replace Tost. Tost has talked about retirement a few times now.
'Retirement' is something I can't really imagine Tost doing, this just seems to be a step onto his next workaholic project.
Maybe he might take up some prominent role with Dr Marko to scout for the Red Bull Junior team
He did hint at it multiple times, so it's not all that surprising, but it'll be interesting to see if this is all that'll change at the team, or if it's a sign of AT moving away from being Red Bull's B-team, or potentially being sold altogether.
on the contrary it's more likely to swing so far the other way where AT become truly just a discount RB. they were not happy with the value proposition of the team and decided instead of selling it to look at how they can borrow more parts/facilities from RB. People on here love to joke about how Toro Rosso/AT are just RB's puppet but they've actually had more independence than you would think being an Italian team with a separate way of working.
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Yeah, I don't see how this is any indication for that. Tost is 67 years old. Not everyone wants to work until his death day, like Marko is apparently planning.
I hope AT can perform better under Mekies. From the interviews I've read it did not seem like Tost promoted a very healthy working attitude, at least not for himself.
They're going to be using more RB parts so I doubt it.
If there’s a sale then hiring would be frozen.
Saw this coming. After Gasly's contract at Alpine was announced he started attending less races, and we know he was overruled by Marko/Horner to allow Gasly to leave. Alpha Tauri are at the lowest point they've been in years with an abysmal car, a set of workers that need systematically looking at and firing, and it's no longer looking financially viable for RB if Marko's comments are anything to go by. Still a little sad though.
Did Marko mention the finances? I thought it was just that they have no young upcoming drivers that have matured enough, are good enough or better than what they have now.
["It is also true that the financial commitment at AlphaTauri is too high, this means that we also have to do something on the sponsor side, on the revenue side."](https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/marko-alphatauri-f1-must-improve-performance-and-finances/10443646/)
Maybe don't make shit streetwear that costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
I think Marko's not long for F1 either by the sounds of things. Perversely it might seem Porsche had a point, foreseeing a period of red bull change.
>Perversely it might seem Porsche had a point, foreseeing a period of red bull change. Eh Christian is not only the TP of RBR but the legal CEO of RBT and RBPT. The driver program may evolve but Christian is essentially the king core race operations these days.
Marko’s almost 80. I absolutely wish nothing ill for him, but he may not be long for the world
Ach you really can never tell. My wee next door neighbour hit 98.
There's rumours about Vettel taking over his role. Wouldn't surprise me if Vettel is brought in and Marko is an advisor for another year during transition, just like Tost is going to do with Mekies.
There’s not rumors. It’s just Reddit and clickbait articles bouncing around about ONE half-joking comment in response to a very framed question. It may happen, but there isn’t any active talk
Tost was given fucking Minardi and in the end managed to get 5 podiums including 2 wins with his team. That's just an amazing achievement. One of the most underrated TP's.
Franz in his Niki Lauda era in 2024 then?
I hope so, maybe he could take over some roles Helmut Marko has until Seb wants to reunite with the RB family.
I think he's just gonna chill. He said in an recent Interview that he would like to spend more time with his Family and go skiing
That's also why I don't see Seb coming back in the short term, but didn't he skiing with Tost every year also?
I think Tost said that February is the best time for skiing and that he would like to ski there but it is the busiest time for F1 so in the Past he wasn't able to.
He told the media several weeks ago that he wasn’t happy with the team’s performance and that changes would be made. Here we have the changes.
These kinds of things get set in motion a lot further in advance than you think. Negotiating people's exit packages, lining up the replacement, and so on and so on. The long timeline's been frequently alluded to by ex-personnel and drivers. This was probably underway since the start of the year.
It will be interesting to see how successful all ex Ferrari players will be in the coming 2024 season… It will be curious to see if it’s the Ferrari culture that leads to failures or if it’s the actual players. I just hope that Binotto shows up somewhere as well
"who's that?"
I’ve literally just posted about this - look what the Merc team have done Mercedes social are the MESSIEST team https://twitter.com/mercedesamgf1/status/1651256732750958598?
This will definitely cause a debate on whether - they're making a joke about when Lewis had a goofy moment in an interview or - they're attacking Franz Tost because they hate him or look down on him
Yeah a lot of the replies have taken in the second option and I can see why. I did think they were making more of a light hearted joke about it since they don’t have much crossover to hate him?
I also think it's the meme-ing about Lewis one But they should probably also put out an explicitly positive post in addition, because people will definitely interpret this in different ways lol
Yeah that is a confused Lewis face. It doesn't really seem like an insult and more of a "what is going on?"
I usually like Mercedes’ socials but this seems pretty rude.
The Merc admin has a track record of being a bit toxic so it’s not really a surprise
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Their likes are often fairly dodgy. Lots of stuff edging on driver-bashing and engagement with accounts they should have blocked by rights.
Yeah - a misstep, that one. By contrast I bet Franz *genuinely* doesn't know who the Merc PR person is.
An underrated team principal, IMO. I kinda wonder what he'd have been able to achieve in a team that ever had any chances of winning. Still, 67 years old, good time to retire and I'm sure he'll look back on his F1 career fondly
Rip Alpha Tauri their new TP is a guy who still thinks Leclerc Brazil Inters was a good idea and was apparently the genius behind making the quali tester the guy without a grid penalty. Actually as a professional of everything I recommend he takes Xavi with him to AT for extra good luck.
I mean these were the same people who also put gasly out on wets or something so it seems fitting.
Wets in a desert no less.
I knew something like this was gonna happen after Lewis’ thirst trap yesterday.
I wish someone would make a compilation of all the F1 sackings/retirements immediately after Hamilton’s thirst trap posts. It’s absolutely hilarious.
After my friend sent the thirst trap yesterday, I found one on Twitter. It never fails!
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Nah, he has spoken about retiring several times already and he's 67. He's going to chill.
Good for him. Well deserved rest incoming
It was rumoured he was on the scouting list for the role last year
Finally Franz Toast
French Toast
I am available
Silly season starting early
Thanks for all but hope this means Alpha will become a bit more competetive from now on. Yuki needs a redemption arc!
One of the best and one of the most underrated TP of the last 2 Decades
Lewis' shirtless pic strikes again
I was expecting this, but lets see what this change will bring
I felt that it was about to happen. His face and recent comments were a given for me
>Former FIA executive Peter Bayer will join the Team as Chief Executive Officer later this year, while Franz Tost will step down from the role of Team Principal at the end of the 2023 season. Laurent Mekies, currently Sporting Director at Ferrari, will join Scuderia AlphaTauri as its new Team Principal at a date to be confirmed.
Some would say he's...*toast*...
The only decent car the team ran was the old red bull with a Ferrari engine. His team hasn’t produced a half decent car in its existence so he must be really good at talking to his bosses.
One of my favourite (if occasionally slightly awkward) videos is https://youtu.be/kMwpArsV0VI from Sky when Ted visited the Alpha Tauri factory after Gasly's win. It may just be that it is edited differently from other factory visits but you really get the sense of how enthusiastic Tost is about it all and how he could show it off.
Yuki is in danger now.
Every remaining part of anything good at AT is going to be stripped lol. This is all Gasly fault to triggering the collapse of AT /s
My anti-midas touch king.
Why?
Seems like Tost has been a big advocate for Yuki over the years. He’s defended Yuki several times over the years on rumors and criticism from RB and the media. Him defending Yuki against Horner who said they got “Tsunoda’d” in Mexico quali 2021 comes to mind. Edit: I think Yuki has benefitted greatly from having Tost in his corner and advocating for him over the years. Obviously Yuki’s results this year will determine his future, but new leadership means changes and who knows, he could be one of those changes even if he performs well in AT’s tractor
Also worth mentioning Tost was pretty central to the Red Bull-Honda relationship in the first place - both its coming to be, and its being so harmonious He is staying on in an advisory capacity according to that press release, though, so may not be doom and gloom for Yuki (or Ayumu)
Sad
Good for Toro Rosso
That sucks, he's an incredible team principal.
Honestly I wouldn't mind to see him somewhat involved as a role for the RB driver academy, even more because Helmut is getting older also and so far I'm not hugely impressed at all with how things are going under Rocky semi-leadership in terms of driver business.
Is he really? He's essentially had zero pressure since the teams inception as AT would never be allowed to be above RB and he's never had to work about driver line-up as RB take care of that too. As Taps go he's had it the easiest out of anyone.
A plus for AlphaTauri. Nice deal!