McLaren made another key signing ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix as former Red Bull chief engineering officer Rob Marshall will join the Woking-based team in 2024; watch the Canadian GP from June 16-18 with all sessions live on Sky Sports F1
Friday 9 June 2023 13:35, UK
McLaren have endured a difficult start to 2023 which was underlined by another point-less race at the Spanish Grand Prix.
It's been an unsuccessful last 10 years for McLaren, with just one win in that period courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo's victory at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Prior to the weekend's action in Spain, McLaren announced Red Bull's chief engineering officer Rob Marshall will join the team from the start of 2024.
Marshall will become the team's new technical director for design and engineering from January 1 as part of a major restructure at McLaren, with David Sanchez also joining the team from Ferrari, as technical director for car concept and performance, and Peter Prodromou heading up the aerodynamic side.
Marshall joined Red Bull in 2006 as chief designer and, along with Adrian Newey, helped create four championship-winning cars between 2010-2013.
Newey is seen as one of F1's greatest ever designers, so Marshall's experience with him should bode well for McLaren.
"I got very heavily involved [with the deal]," McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports F1. "Someone on our team had his phone number, so I put in a call.
"Any time you're recruiting someone who is very senior, they need to understand the direction of travel to get excited.
"Red Bull are a fantastic team so for him to leave there after so much success, I think shows the excitement that he believes we've got coming here at McLaren.
"I think his results speak for themselves. Adrian Newey has nothing but great things to say about Rob, and we all know Adrian knows what he's doing. He gave him a good endorsement."
Christian Horner says he is disappointed to lose Marshall but understood the decision.
"Rob has been with us for 17 years and has been an instrumental player in the building of Red Bull Racing," explained Horner. "He was able to accommodate things mechanically within the car like batteries inside the gearbox with the KERS car back in the 2009-2013 era.
"He played a significant role within the team but over recent years he moved onto other projects and hasn't been on the mainstream of Formula 1.
"After 17 years he had an offer, a significant offer, from McLaren. While he still had a period of time on his contract, he was keen to go back into F1, so we came go an agreement with him, negotiated a deal with Zak that worked for everybody.
"We did a little thing for him at his last debrief. Usually when someone leaves a team we tell them to **** off. With Rob it's a bit different, he's a good guy. He's just going onto a new challenge.
"It's a bit like Manchester United. If you look at their team, how it evolved over a period of time, Eric Cantona wasn't still playing 17 years later."
Lando Norris has been McLaren's shining star since 2021, seemingly maximising the potential of the equipment he's been provided as he dominated Daniel Ricciardo.
Norris, whose current contract expires at the end of 2025, will be eager to win races and contend for championships and McLaren will be keen it's them who the British driver has success for.
The 23-year-old describes Marshall as a "big signing", stating he will "bring brains and lap time".
"I would say a I have lot [of belief], even more now than in the past," added Norris. "I guess I would never want to say that I have no belief, and I never have said it and probably won't, but definitely since the last few changes, there have been a lot of good things coming from that, both in terms of mood, atmosphere, but at the same time, also performance and things to look forward to in the future.
"So not everything is purely direct in Formula 1, a lot of things take time, so I guess you have that part of it too, but definitely things have taken a step forward so I can easily confirm that and say it with confidence. But, until we see it, that's the timely part."
Team principal Andrea Stella has already overseen plenty of changes in Woking since replacing Andreas Seidl in December.
McLaren are also set to put their new wind tunnel into action, as they currently share Toyota's facility in Cologne.
James Key left his role as technical director in March, which led to the reshuffle in the technical department that will see Sanchez and Marshall join the team in January 2024.
Stella admitted the technical structure is "well-set now and quite strong" and says Marshall has been "instrumental" in creating "such a strong" Red Bull engineering team.
"Certainly Rob was very keen to join McLaren. He understood perfectly our journey, our ambition," said Stella.
"I think he understood that he could be a fundamental player in trying to make something important like bringing McLaren to the victory, so strong motivation from his side.
"I think at Red Bull they know very well the role that Rob played over time, and I think this invokes respect for people. From what I could judge from outside, I saw this level of respect from Red Bull to Rob which, observing, was good to see.
"And then when it came to the press release, that was obviously agreed between the teams, that's why it was coordinated."
This is a very important question because the budget cap is set to become a big talking point again as the FIA check the financial statements from the teams' 2022 spending.
In October last year, it was announced Aston Martin were found to be in procedural breach while Red Bull were found to be in procedural breach and having committed a "minor financial overspend". Red Bull were hit with a £6.07m fine and a 10 per cent reduction in wind tunnel time for this year.
Due to the budget cap, which is $135m (£108.5m) from 2023-2025, some teams have been forced to make dozens of redundancies, with Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes the most affected.
"You can't carry anybody within the team. Everyone has to warrant their place within the cap," said Horner. "Rob was focused on other projects in recent years. The offer McLaren made is probably half their cap! So you can't blame him for wanting to go and do that."
Pushed on whether the cost cap was causing more movement in staff personnel in F1, Horner added: "You have to make sure it's not a race to the bottom.
"The problem is you have long-standing personnel that have contributed significant amounts that you don't want to see forced out of their role because of the cap. Just because you can justify 10 youngsters versus one experienced person, that's the constant thing that you have.
"Where we have had redundancies through the cap, Jayne Pool, was one of those as well, because we couldn't justify a role within the cap."
McLaren believe they will have no problems to stay within the budget cap, despite signing some of F1's biggest technical gurus.
"In terms of budget, Zak is doing a good job to put McLaren in condition to spend this money," said Stella. "And in terms of compliance, actually within the regulations, we had the possibility to spend this kind of budget, not only from an operational point of view, but also in terms of capital expenditures.
"So it didn't create particular challenges, I would say. So it's not been a difficult process.
Marshall is the latest technical member to leave Red Bull after Dan Fallows joined Aston Martin last year, in line with their rise up the field.
In March, Red Bull's chief operations officer Jayne Pool made a surprise move to Mercedes and Toto Wolff says she's already been a "great addition".
We won't know until 2024 whether these departures will hinder Red Bull, but they still have a mighty team led by Adrian Newey.
Newey will be at Red Bull "for many years to come" according to Horner, while technical officer Pierre Wache, aerodynamics designers Craig Skinner and Enrico Balbo head up the aerodynamics side, plus head of performance engineering Ben Waterhouse have created, what appears to be, the best senior technical group in F1.
Other teams have chosen to follow Red Bull's car concept and the team are on course to win this year's championship, so it certainly doesn't feel like Verstappen and Perez will be on a downward trajectory any time soon.
F1 returns in Canada from June 16-18 with all sessions live on Sky Sports F1, including race coverage from 5.30pm on Sunday June 18
