Marko says Red Bull took wrong turn after Mateschitz

Helmut Marko says Red Bull’s current slide is rooted in both a wrong technical direction and a deeper transformation inside the company after Dietrich Mateschitz’s death, changes he believes left the team far removed from the one he helped build and ultimately pushed him to walk away after 2025.

Speaking after his Red Bull exit, Marko said the team’s start to the new season has been disappointing because the car went off course almost immediately. He said the new car was only acceptable in the opening race in Melbourne, then “the development of the chassis took a wrong turn.” Marko added that Red Bull’s engine “is not the best, but that is not the biggest problem.”

He tied that directly to Red Bull’s results. After three races, Max Verstappen sits ninth in the standings and Isack Hadjar is 12th. Verstappen’s best finish so far is sixth in Australia, followed by a retirement in China and eighth place in Japan. For a team that expected much more under the new technical regulations, Marko’s assessment was blunt: last year Verstappen “performed a miracle” to fight for the title, but “I fear that this will not be possible this year.”

Marko also made clear that he sees Red Bull’s struggles as part of a broader shift that began after Mateschitz died in 2022. In an interview with the Austrian edition of Die Zeit, Marko said that under Mateschitz Red Bull was “a one-man show,” with a leader who could decide alone, had vision, and quickly recognized what worked and what did not. He contrasted that with the current setup, saying Red Bull now has three managing directors who have to report upward, making it resemble a more conventional corporate leadership structure.

For Marko, that meant more than an organizational chart changing. He said Red Bull had entered “a new era,” and that his own position changed with it because the personal relationship he had with Mateschitz no longer existed with successor Oliver Mintzlaff, who took responsibility for the Formula 1 project as one of those three managing directors. Marko said he eventually went to Mintzlaff and told him, “I’m stopping.”

He said the role he held required total commitment. “For the job I did, you need passion, you have to burn for it,” Marko said. “If you no longer feel that, it becomes laborious.”

Even so, Marko insisted he did not officially leave because of Red Bull’s new management structure alone. He said the decisive reason was sporting disappointment after the team failed to win the 2025 world championship. That, he said, was the result that made him draw his own conclusions. Missing what would have been a fifth consecutive title by two points made it “a huge disappointment,” and in Marko’s telling, that missed championship and Red Bull’s post-Mateschitz transformation now form part of the same story: a team that no longer looks or performs like the one from its peak years.