Red Bull Racing has resumed poaching from the sister team

One of the greatest storylines in Formula 1 right now is the fate of Red Bull Racing, which honestly looked like it was about to rocket back to the top mid-year last year after firing Christian Horner, only to fall flat on its ass with the new car. Laurent Mekies got a lot of benefit of the doubt last year when his call-up coincided with Max Verstappen’s championship resurgence, but now he has to make some serious moves. The mass exodus of talent, mostly to McLaren, continues apace, so Mekies has to find the right people to promote from within to get the next generation started.

The big moves during the surprise war-induced spring break are the promotion of Ben Waterhouse to chief performance and design engineer (formerly head of performance engineering, God, F1 job titles are dumb) and the relocation of Andrea Landi, formerly deputy technical director at Racing Bulls, to the A team as head of performance.

Surely, everyone at Racing Bulls understands that providing talent to Red Bull Racing is the entire point of their organization, and no one will be mad at Laurent Mekies for poaching their guy as he himself was poached only a year ago. What’s interesting about this poaching — I mean, uh, promotion — is that Landi was the guy in charge of car development at Racing Bulls.

Remember, the car story last year was that the Red Bull was a nightmare as always — in the way Max likes — and the VCARB was one of the most benign cars on the grid, enabling the team to snatch podiums and stuff, giving Isack Hadjar the results he needed to get moved up to Red Bull after just one year. Perhaps it is time for Red Bull to make race cars that are nice to drive, especially now that GP and possibly even Max are leaving.