{"id":393512,"date":"2026-01-05T16:58:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/393512\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T16:58:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T16:58:05","slug":"red-bull-veteran-granted-early-leave-to-take-up-mclaren-f1-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/393512\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull veteran granted early leave to take up McLaren F1 role"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Red Bull Formula 1 veteran Will Courtenay has been granted permission to join McLaren as sporting director earlier than planned.<\/p>\n<p>Reigning constructors\u2019 champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/teams\/mclaren\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">McLaren<\/a> announced in 2024 that it had signed Courtenay, though he was unable to exit his current Red Bull deal as head of strategy.<\/p>\n<p>The original plan by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/teams\/red-bull-racing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Red Bull<\/a> was for Courtenay to see out the remainder of his contract on gardening leave until the middle of 2026, after which he could begin as sporting director at McLaren.<\/p>\n<p>However, ahead of the first pre-season test of the 2026 season at the end of January, Courtenay announced on LinkedIn that he has now started his role with McLaren.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m happy to share that I\u2019m starting a new position as Sporting Director at McLaren Racing,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter 22 years at Red Bull Racing, the last 15 as head of race strategy there, I\u2019m excited to say I\u2019m now embarking on a new challenge, joining the McLaren Racing Formula 1 Team as sporting director.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d like to say a huge thanks to everyone I worked with at Red Bull.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI made so many great friends there, and I hope I\u2019ll still see many of you in the paddock. It was an incredible two and a bit decades.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut now I\u2019m looking forward to settling into my new role and team, and hopefully making plenty more new friends, as I do my very best to help McLaren continue its recent success in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Courtenay\u2019s time at Red Bull included four title wins with Sebastian Vettel between 2010 and 2013, and a further four with Max Verstappen between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>He is the latest major departure from the Milton Keynes-based outfit, following Christian Horner\u2019s exit as team principal midway through 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull also lost legendary designer Adrian Newey to Aston Martin in 2025, while Helmut Marko lost his role at the end of last season.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen\u2019s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase has also been linked to roles at Williams and Aston Martin.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull Formula 1 veteran Will Courtenay has been granted permission to join McLaren as sporting director earlier&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,913,946,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-393512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-red-bull-racing","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}