Mark Hughes: ‘The conveyor belt of senior F1 staff changes is quite unprecedented’

There’ s plenty of talk of how volatile the 2025 driver market has been, but if anything it’s been overshadowed by the conveyor belt of senior staff changes recently. In fact, it’s quite unprecedented.

The earthquake struck a few months ago with Adrian Newey’s announcement of his departure from Red Bull at the end of the year. But that’s just the headline move.

It was only 12 months ago that Alpine dispensed with the services of its then team principal Otmar Szafnauer in the middle of a grand prix weekend (together with sporting director Alan Permane) and placed Bruno Famin in that role, in an acting capacity. Famin’s role was made ‘permanent’ earlier this year but that permanence lasted only a few months and at Spa it was announced he’d be standing down and moving back to his role at the head of the Viry factory responsible for the Renault power units in the back of the Alpines. This has coincided with the arrival from the past of Flavio Briatore who as de facto Alpine team boss has decided the team has no need of Renault’s power units.

Joining the team as technical director in the previous month was ex-Ferrari technical chief David Sanchez who had joined McLaren only at the start of this season but stayed just three months. Sanchez was Alpine’s replacement for Matt Harman who departed the team in April after five years, together with head of aero Dirk de Beer. Harman has subsequently joined Williams, where he will start as design director after the summer break.

Harman was part of a 26-person recruitment drive by Williams as they took engineers also from Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull including Juan Molina from Red Bull who joins as Williams’ chief aerodynamicist under head of aerodynamics Adam Kenyon who joined in June from Mercedes. Mercedes departed with its head of aerodynamics Gioacchino Vino, also in June. A month earlier Merc’s long-serving performance engineering chief Loic Serra left ahead of a new role he will take up in October at Ferrari as head of chassis performance engineering. Going with him was deputy team principal Jérôme d’Ambrosio for the equivalent position at Maranello.

At Haas the pre-season departure of Guenther Steiner from his role of team principal saw technical director Simone Resta leaving with him. Resta has since taken up a role at Mercedes as strategic development director, reuniting him there with James Allison, the pair having worked at Ferrari together.

In July Audi released the Sauber team CEO Andreas Seidl it had recruited just 18 months earlier and replaced him with former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto. Leaving with Seidl was Oliver Hoffmann, who had only recently been made chairman of the board of the Sauber group. Binotto has been assigned the twin roles of chief operating and chief technical officer, effectively the team boss and the technical boss.

All of these moves reflect the pressure for results in a sport which paradoxically demands long-term thinking and planning. But the big personnel additions at Aston Martin appear to be something quite different. Enrico Cardile, having sensationally surrendered his position as Ferrari technical director, has joined Aston Martin F1 as chief technical officer. He will begin work there in 2025 and will report directly to the team principal (currently Mike Krack). Existing Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows will report to Cardile. This announcement came just days after that confirming former Mercedes HPP engine chief Andy Cowell would join the team from October 1 as Group CEO, replacing Martin Whitmarsh and reporting directly to owner Lawrence Stroll.

Bob Bell joined the Aston project in March of this year as executive director – technical, reporting to Mike Krack. These are seriously heavyweight moves around one team – and so many of them.

As it heads towards its new era partnering with Honda, the Aston recruitments have a similar ring to those of Mercedes over a decade ago when it was putting the foundations in place for the dominant Mercedes hybrid era of 2014-20. It even has two of the same people – Cowell and Bell – who were part of the formidable technical team put in place to oversee two simultaneous programmes, as deemed desirable by the radically new regulations of 2014. Ross Brawn, Aldo Costa, Cowell and Bell were the brains trust of that project. Aston Martin now has a similarly formidable-looking line-up ahead of the similarly radically new regulations of 2026.

There has been inevitable speculation that Newey could be part of this heavyweight recruitment drive, but it doesn’t have the feel of the sort of environment Adrian would be relaxed in. A relaxed Newey is a creative Newey. If anything, this build-up of forces would be expected to deflect him elsewhere. Only when that plate has settled will we know what F1’s new territory will look like.

Since he began covering grand prix racing in 2000, Mark Hughes has forged a reputation as the finest Formula 1 analyst of his generation
Follow Mark on Twitter @SportmphMark