The French engineer will move to a new role to oversee the many young drivers on the Red Bull program after being one of the mainstays at the Milton Keynes outfit. His former duties will be carried out by Gianpiero Lambiase , who will remain Max Verstappen ‘s engineer on race weekends in Formula 1.
Rocquelin, 47, rose to prominence in Indycar with the PacWest and Newman-Haas teams before making the jump to Red Bull in 2008 as David Coulthard ‘s race engineer.
Later, he went on to work with Sebastian Vettel , and that’s how he became a very important part of the German’s four world titles between 2010-2013, in the golden age of the whole of energy drinks. In 2015, he rose to chief race engineer, contributing to Verstappen’s fifth drivers’ crown in 2021.
“The engineering team continues to evolve, and not least because we have to look to be efficient with the budget cap,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner .
“I think ‘Rocky’ has done an amazing job on track for us over the last 15 or 16 years, racing Sebastian [Vettel] for all his wins and world championships and obviously leading the engineers for the last year’s success too.
“He is going to evolve and take on a new role working with our young drivers area, in which we will seek to use all his experience of working with so many drivers,” he explained. “With so much engineering knowledge to continue to develop the youngest of Red Bull, he will be able to take a very important role in that project, see how they integrate into the team , and apply scientific tools to that.”
“So it’s an exciting new challenge for ‘Rocky’ and it will be his last race weekend here (at the Australian GP) before he moves into that role,” Horner said before letting the Frenchman off in Melbourne.
Regarding the change of Lambiase , the Red Bull chief executive added: “The restructuring will see ‘GP’ step up to become the main track engineer while still maintaining the role of race engineer for Max [Verstappen].” .
“So it’s an evolution, it’s great to see that within the team, and I think they’re both going to shine in their next roles.”
