Helmut Marko will leave Red Bull at the end of this year, Telegraph Sport understands.
Red Bull’s longstanding motorsports adviser, 82, admitted at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi that he would be weighing up his options this winter amid growing indications he could be heading for retirement.
Asked whether his future at the team was in doubt, Marko said: “It’s not in doubt, I will have a discussion and then I see what I do. It’s a complex [set] of different things. I have to sleep over it and then we will see.”
Paddock sources suggest a decision has already been made and that Marko will be leaving.
His departure will not affect the future of star driver Max Verstappen, for whom the competitiveness of Red Bull’s car next season, when radical new regulations come into effect, will be the decisive factor in whether he opts to stay beyond 2026.
At the height of the Christian Horner controversy last year, after it emerged that Marko could be suspended pending an internal investigation into media leaks, Verstappen described the Austrian – a close ally of Red Bull’s late co-owner Dietrich Mateschitz – as an “important pillar” of the team, adding that if Marko went, it would “not be good” for his future either.
“So, for me, Helmut has to stay, for sure,” Verstappen concluded.
Red Bull are a team in transition
However, Marko is well into his 80s now. And while his influence has been significant for a long time – along with Verstappen’s father, Jos, Marko agitated for Horner to go last year, which eventually happened when Red Bull’s Austrian overlords fired the Englishman in July – Mateschitz’s death in 2022 made his position less secure. And he has been known to put his foot in his mouth. It is understood Red Bull chief Oliver Mintzlaff was unimpressed by Marko’s comments about Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in Qatar last month, which led to the Italian receiving death threats.
His departure will mark another big moment for the team, who are in a state of transition under new team principal Laurent Mekies.
Verstappen almost produced one of the all-time great comebacks this season to win a fifth successive drivers’ title. He was eventually beaten into second place by McLaren’s Lando Norris by just two points. The Milton Keynes team will be using their own power units for the first time next year.
Mekies acknowledged over the Abu Dhabi weekend that there were some “difficult decisions” to make this winter, hinting at Marko’s departure.
“Helmut has been incredible in how supportive he has been in helping us turning around things this year,” Mekies told therace.com. “Obviously, him and top management had quite a few difficult decisions to make in the year, and of course, we always know F1 is not a static environment.
“You always adjust your organisations. It applies to technical, it applies to sporting and it’s completely normal that we review how we can improve the way we operate all the time. I’m not saying that specifically for Helmut, but I’m saying that in general, we are in an environment where we always challenge each other and look for the next steps, no matter how small it is in trying to work together.
“But I can only thank Helmut for the role he has played in making fundamentally better what looked like a difficult situation mid-season.”
Red Bull have been contacted for comment.
