Red Bull Racing motorsport advisor Helmut Marko will leave the racing team at the end of the year, and will not fulfill his last year of contract. Marko, 82 years old, was contracted until 2026, but right after the end of the season, the team has confirmed that Marko will be pushed out of the team, because "Formula 1 is not a static environment, you always adjust your organisations, and it applies to technical, it applies to sporting", as said by team principal Laurent Mekies.
"I can only thank Helmut for the role he has played in making what looked like a difficult situation at the mid-season making work with the support", said Mekies, who replaced Christian Horner last summer. In a span of a few months, the two founders of the Red Bull team, the most successful team in the last 25 years, have left the team.
According to speculation, the move comes from the desire from the Austrian parent company, the energy drink brand Red Bull GmbH, to more closely control the Formula 1 team. Recently, Marko was involved in a controversy when he accused Kimi Antonelli of letting himself pass by Lando Norris, which prompted the team to issue an apology to the Italian driver. He also hired Alex Dunne as a junior drive in the summer without consulting with anyone at the Red Bull management, and when they found out, the immediately fired Dunne, paying him a heavy compensation of hundreds of thousands of euros.
Marko, however, has always had the support of Max Verstappen, and has protected him in other occassions, which explains why Hermut was not fired earlier. It was Marko wo, back in 2015, promoted Verstappen to Formula 1 in the Toro Rosso team (now Racing Bulls). Marko was also in charge of the junior programme that produced Sebastian Vettel.