What Formula 1 team Racing Bulls is hoping for from the change of its English location and why the previous facility has long been inadequate
Racing Bulls will become Red Bull’s new neighbor in Milton Keynes, England, when it soon moves into a new facility next to the Red Bull campus. And this change is already being eagerly awaited by Racing Bulls’ Head of Engineering Jody Egginton.
Because Racing Bulls’ current UK site in Bicester is no longer fit for the future. “We are working at full capacity there and would have difficulty accommodating ten people from Faenza for a week at the moment,” explains Egginton. A genuine exchange between the workshops in England and Italy is therefore at least “difficult”, but absolutely essential for the further growth of the team.
“We have to get people to work together,” says Egginton. “A new and larger location simply offers more flexibility here.”
“Because when you’re trying to build a team and a structure, the ability to have people from England spend more time in Faenza – and vice versa – is positive for collaboration. We are then simply freer to plan our workforce and have access to a larger personnel market.”
Bicester is therefore “no longer the ideal facility”, also for purely technical reasons: “We haven’t been using the wind tunnel there for a few years now.” This is despite the fact that the aerodynamics department is one of the major areas for which the UK site was once set up.
This strategic orientation is to remain in place in the future: Aerodynamics development (among other things) will be carried out in England, while the production of parts and the assembly of the cars will take place in Italy. Racing operations will also be coordinated from Faenza
Racing Bulls can expand in all directions
And all of this on a larger scale than before and with numerous new additions, one of the most prominent figures of which is Tim Goss: he spent almost three decades in senior technical roles at McLaren and most recently was also technical director at the FIA. Now Goss is moving to Racing Bulls and thus back into “active” Formula 1.
Egginton sees this as explicitly “positive” because Goss and other new employees will improve the team’s performance. “Tim’s experience will also help us to divide up responsibilities differently and get more issues off the table more quickly,” says Egginton.
“It’s all good for the team. It’s really nice to see that we can grow. Because we’re still one of the smaller teams.”
As of 2023, Racing Bulls employed a total of 353 people, around a third of the workforce of Red Bull, for example. Also in 2023, 735 people were employed by the current defending world champion and a further 350 people worked in the engine department.
