Former Ferrari chief takes up new role at McLaren in key appointment<\/a><\/p>\nRed Bull appoints a replacement as head of communications<\/p>\n
Red Bull has also appointed a new person to lead its communications department, with Benjamin Ippoliti taking on the role of director of communications, reporting directly to Laurent Mekies.<\/p>\n
Ippoliti\u2019s background has been Red Bull-associated for the last decade, working with Red Bull GmbH CEO Oliver Mintzlaff at football club RB Leipzig between 2015 and \u201920, before moving to work with Red Bull directly in Austria.<\/p>\n
Most recently, he worked as global head of marketing and communications corporate projects at the company\u2019s Salzburg headquarters.<\/p>\n
Ippoliti replaces the former group director of communications, Paul Smith, who was let go by Red Bull at the same time as team principal and CEO Christian Horner in July 2025.<\/p>\n
More communications team changes across the grid<\/p>\n
Other changes up and down the grid include a change of communications leadership at Racing Bulls, where long-time head of communications Fabiana Valenti, whose career at Faenza stems back to its days as Minardi, has moved to a factory-based corporate communications role.<\/p>\n
In her place is Alexandra Horton, who has stepped up from senior communications manager at the squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking forward to continuing to lead Communications for a team that\u2019s gone from an unknown, unestablished brand to one of Formula 1\u2019s most respected and loved teams for younger audiences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of what this team has delivered in a year that threw us more than a few curveballs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf 2025 taught me anything, it\u2019s that having the right people around you allows you to conquer anything, and I\u2019m so grateful to work with a team that trusts, challenges, and inspires each other every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Williams, Rebecca Banks has moved on from leading the team\u2019s F1 communications, having moved into the role in early 2022. Williams\u2019 F1 communications will now be led by Dominique-Heyer Wright, reporting to group head of communications Craig Woodhouse.<\/p>\n
Sauber\u2019s chief communications officer, Florian Buengener, has also left his role, citing personal reasons. An update to the department is expected, but the department is currently being led by Will Ponissi, a long-time senior communications manager with the Hinwil-based squad, who became the team\u2019s head of corporate and race communications in mid-2025.<\/p>\n
Buengener\u2019s departure follows shortly after Audi\u2019s communications director, Guido Stalmann, left the team in September 2025.<\/p>\n
At Haas, the growth of the American team has seen Jessica Borrell step up from senior communications manager to become head of F1 communications, having been with the team since 2021.<\/p>\n
She will report to the director of communications, Stuart Morrison, with further appointments to the department expected.<\/p>\n
All of these changes come shortly after McLaren announced the arrival of former Ferrari and Pirelli communications chief Luca Colajanni to replace the departing Sophie Ogg.<\/p>\n
The moves mean that the longest-serving communications chief in Formula 1 is now\u00a0Mercedes\u2019 Bradley Lord, who has been with the German marque since February 2011 \u2013 Lord has since become the team\u2019s chief communications officer and team representative under Toto Wolff.<\/p>\n
Just a few months behind him in longevity is Will Hings of Aston Martin, head of media and communications, who joined the then-Force India squad in April 2011, working alongside chief communications officer Luke Skipper, Adrian Atkinson\u2019s replacement at the Silverstone-based squad.<\/p>\n
Read Next:\u00a0Mercedes has \u2018new dreams to achieve\u2019 as F1 2026 \u2018mission statement\u2019 published<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari and Red Bull, amongst others, have made changes to their communications department structures ahead of the F1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,930,576,577,1613,44,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-397774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-ferrari","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-home-page","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}