Who will succeed advisor Helmut Marko at Red Bull? The now 82-year-old Austrian previously pointed to former Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel as the ideal candidate to take over his role in due course. However, according to former F1 driver Hans-Joachim Stuck, appointing Vettel would be ‘a wrong solution’ for Red Bull.
Helmut Marko has been involved as an advisor to the Austrian team since 2005. His collaboration with Red Bull goes back even further, to 1999, when he took the reins of the Red Bull Junior team. Marko has been with Red Bull for quite some time, but the 82-year-old does not seem ready to definitively hang up his advisory role just yet. Nevertheless, he is already considering a potential successor in the form of Sebastian Vettel.
“He has been a brilliant strategist within all his Formula 1 teams,” Marko praised the former Red Bull driver in an interview with Sky Sports. “It would be great if he could take over my job one day.” Vettel later confirmed that there are indeed talks ongoing with the Austrian about a role at his former employer, and according to Max Verstappen, there is ‘always room’ for the four-time world champion. It therefore seems only a matter of time before Vettel returns to the Austrians.
‘Wrong Solution’
However, former Formula 1 driver Hans-Joachim Stuck considers it a ‘wrong solution’ for Red Bull to have Marko succeeded by Vettel. “I have nothing against Sebastian, but he is simply not a team manager. He would never be an option for me,” the German told Eurosport Deutschland. “At Helmut’s level, a former driver can’t just step in. And Sebastian would not be doing himself any favors right now.”
The four-time world champion stated in 2022, his last year in Formula 1, that he would like to spend more time with his children. “Sebastian also ended his F1 career for his family,” Stuck also says. “As Marko’s successor, he would be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week again.”
