Photo credit: McLaren Racing
The big off track news this week was that senior Red Bull engineer Rob Marshall will join McLaren at the start of 2024. This will come as a blow to Red Bull, after losing a lot of talent recently, notably Dan Fallows who joined Aston Martin last year as technical director and is thought by many as to the reason why Aston Martin have such a strong car this year.
Speaking ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend in Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, McLaren Team Boss Andrea Stella explains what Red Bull’s Rob Marshall will bring to McLaren.
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
“Rob joins McLaren bringing a unique level of experience and know-how in terms of engineering and design of Formula 1 cars.
“We know that Rob is fundamental in establishing such a strong technical department at Red Bull so that’s what we expect he will bring to McLaren and we are extremely pleased that he is keen to do that. He is keen to join McLaren as we take the team to the front of the grid,” explained Stella
With new infrastructure coming on board to the Woking-based team in the months ahead, McLaren will now be in a much better position to try and get back to winning Formula 1 races and championships. What was once a state of the art facility at MTC is currently getting big updates and this will hopefully help the team complete at a better level according to Stella.
“This is compunded by all the investments on infastructure,” he added.
Stella stressed also that they have some other great talent and feels Marshall mainly ‘consolidates’ what they already have.
“In terms of technical structure, having Rob now consolidates what we have already with different personnel in different roles.”
Looking at this weekend, Stella gave his verdict on their current form in the dry, and he remains extremely realistic.
“At the moment if we can come away from this weekend with having a car in Q3 and come away with some points, that will be positive for our current level of competitiveness.”
Stella is also hoping for some rain as he highlighted their Monaco performance under these conditions.
“We definitely would hope for some rain, in Monte Carlo we were quite competitive on intermediate tyres so some variability would be welcome.”
