Guenther Steiner has warned Red Bull that ‘sooner or later, nobody will be left’ after it was announced that Will Courtenay will leave for McLaren midway through the 2026 season.
Courtenay will continue to work as their head of race strategy before he joins the Woking-based McLaren team as their new Sporting Director.
Red Bull has now lost three key staff members to rival Formula 1 teams in the span of just six months.
Technical guru Adrian Newey is leaving for Aston Martin in 2025 and Sporting Director Jonathan Wheatley is leaving to join Sauber as its new Team Principal next year.
Speaking on the Red Flags podcast, Steiner said: “Sooner or later, nobody will be left at Red Bull! There will be no office space.
“It’s a little bit more than normal,” he said about the amount of individuals that have left the team. “Go back to last year, how many people left? Nobody.
“This year they are leaving left, right, and centre [as] there is a long list of people leaving.
“But it’s also [psychological] – people have been there a long time.
“Someone leaves and they say ‘that will be a good move for me, as well, let’s get out while I’m still worth a lot of money because I was in the best team of the past five years’.
“You have a value, if you wait too long and the team isn’t strong, your value goes down.”
Steiner: Red Bull is weaker ‘with people like Courtenay leaving’
Courtenay began his career in F1 with Jaguar before the team was bought out by Red Bull, continuing to work with the Milton Keynes-based team after the purchase.
He has been part of the reason for the team’s success over the years, including their dominance of the sport with Max Verstappen winning three consecutive titles in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Former Haas Team Principal Steiner added how he believes the impact of losing someone like Courtenay, will affect the team’s performance going forward.
“The strategy, you don’t hear if it goes right, you only hear if it goes wrong,” he said.
“You rarely hear it go wrong at Red Bull, and Will is a part of it, he’s the head of it.
“I know Will, he was there a long time [and] I think I employed him in the beginning.
“It’s one of those things, he didn’t see progression within Red Bull, and got an offer from McLaren to be sporting director.
“Will is a good hire for them [and] he knows his way around, he knows strategy, he knows sporting rules.
“These things happen in F1 but, for sure, it does not make Red Bull stronger with people like Will leaving.”
Steiner backs F1’s reigning champions to rebuild with ‘younger talent’
However, Red Bull still has Team Principal Christian Horner at the helm.
Horner has to cope with the recent decline in performance as they remain winless in eight races, but Steiner believes the team will rebuild.
“The captain is still there, Christian and the engineers are still there,” he said.
“Pierre Wache is still there, he’s very good. They will build up again with younger talent.
“It gives opportunity to people who otherwise would go. With people on top leaving, there are the next people coming in.
“They could be as good as the people leaving, or better. You just don’t know, you need to find out.
“They can fill a lot of the jobs from within.”
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