Former Red Bull engineer Rob Marshall, who swapped the Austrian racing stable for McLaren last year, discusses his reasons for leaving the team. According to the Brit, it became too ‘comfortable’ at Red Bull for the 56-year-old engineer. Therefore, the offer from McLaren came at just the right time.
Rob Marshall worked for seventeen years as Adrian Newey’s right-hand man at Red Bull. The Brit ended this tenure at the end of 2023 and started working at McLaren on January 1, 2024. More than a year later, Marshall reflects on his decision to bid farewell to Red Bull.
“From a personal perspective, McLaren approached me at the right time,” the current McLaren engineer tells PlanetF1. “I was at a point where I thought, ‘If I don’t switch to another team now, I’ll probably be here forever.’ I was happy to be there forever. I really enjoyed my time at Red Bull, it was a great place to work. But then you reach the stage where you become complacent, you’re in the denial phase.””According to Marshall, there was a risk that he was becoming too comfortable at Red Bull. “And then the phone rings and you’re asked: ‘Do you want to leave?’ And you’re about to say: ‘No’. And for some reason, you just can’t. Because at that moment you think: ‘I’ve been fooling myself, I think it’s probably time to go’.”
Happy for Red Bull
The British engineer left the Austrian racing team on good terms. Therefore, Marshall is pleased that the team has achieved success even without him. Although his new team, McLaren, won the constructors’ title in 2024, it was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who took home the drivers’ title. “Now I am absolutely glad that I left and that I left Red Bull in the right way. You would like to think that no one wants to be indispensable, but they clearly made it without me. That’s great for them. You don’t want to let anyone down,” concludes Marshall.
