Red Bull Racing just can’t stop the bleeding.
Craig Skinner, the team’s chief designer and a 20-year veteran of the Milton Keynes operation, resigned on Tuesday. The timing is brutal for Red Bull. It comes just days before the second round of pre-season testing in Bahrain and barely three weeks before the 2026 season opener in Australia.
For newer F1 fans, a quick primer on why this matters. The chief designer is the person responsible for turning aerodynamic concepts and engineering ideas into an actual, physical race car. Think of it like the difference between an architect who draws up blueprints and the general contractor who figures out how to actually build the thing. Craig Skinner was the builder. He made it all work.
Red Bull confirmed the departure in a statement: “After 20 years with the team, Craig Skinner, our Chief Designer, will be leaving the Red Bull Technology team. Craig has been an integral part of our team and its success, and we would like to thank him for his hard work and commitment. The whole Red Bull team wishes him all the best for the future.”
Polite. Professional. And completely devoid of any real explanation.
How Will Craig Skinner’s Departure Impact Max Verstappen
Skinner first arrived at Red Bull in 2006 after stints with the Jordan and Williams teams. He started as a computational fluid dynamics engineer — basically, the person who uses computer simulations to figure out how air flows over a car. He climbed the ranks steadily. Group leader in 2009. Deputy head of aerodynamics. Chief aerodynamicist by 2018. And then, in 2022, he stepped into the role of chief designer, where he played a central part in creating the RB19, widely considered the most dominant car in F1 history.
That 2023 season? Max Verstappen won 19 of 22 races. Skinner’s fingerprints were all over that machine.
According to sources at RacingNews365, Skinner chose to leave on his own terms. The move reportedly has nothing to do with the wave of other high-profile exits that have rocked the team in recent years. But it sure adds to the narrative.
The list of departed talent is getting long. Design legend Adrian Newey left for Aston Martin. Former team principal Christian Horner was ousted last July. Sporting director Jonathan Wheatley now runs Audi’s F1 program. Chief strategist Will Courtenay jumped ship to McLaren. And senior advisor Helmut Marko recently stepped away from his role.
That’s an enormous amount of institutional knowledge walking out the door for any organization, let alone one trying to compete at the absolute pinnacle of motorsport.
Red Bull says Skinner’s responsibilities will be handled internally for now. No replacement has been named.
Craig Skinner Departure Comes at Crucial Time
The irony is that all of this upheaval comes at a time when the team actually looked pretty sharp in Bahrain testing. Red Bull’s RB22 features their first-ever in-house power unit, built in partnership with Ford, and the engine turned heads for its reliability and energy deployment. But technical director Pierre Wache acknowledged to the media that the car still has weight issues to sort out.
“We have some challenges with the weight — it’s the case for everybody,” Wache said. “Maybe some people did a better job than us, but on our side, we will have to find some weight on the car.”
That’s a problem every team faces under the new 2026 regulations, which dropped the minimum car weight from 1,759 to 1,693 pounds. Still, losing your chief designer while trying to shed 66 lbs. off a brand-new car isn’t exactly ideal.
Verstappen, for his part, hasn’t exactly been singing the praises of the new era. He called the 2026 cars “anti-racing” and “not fun” to drive, largely because of how much time drivers spend managing electric energy harvesting rather than actually pushing flat out.
Whether Skinner’s departure ultimately hurts Red Bull on track remains to be seen. The season opener in Melbourne is March 6-8, and that first race will tell us a lot more than testing ever could.
But make no mistake — this is a team that keeps losing the people who made it great. At some point, that catches up with you.
