Red Bull has confirmed the hire of Mercedes' lead talent scout, Gwen Lagrue, with the Frenchman set to take up his new role as the director of the Red Bull junior programme from the start of next year.
Lagrue has headed up Mercedes' young driver programme for over a decade and was responsible for signing of both of the team's current drivers, Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, long before they made their Formula 1 debuts.
As reported by ESPN earlier this month, Lagrue will effectively serve as a replacement for the company's former motorsport advisor Helmut Marko, who left at the end of 2025 after a long stint overseeing the company's pipeline of future talent.
"Gwen is one of the very best talent developers in F1 and I know first-hand the expertise, leadership and passion he brings to developing young drivers," Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said.
"The Red Bull Junior Programme has always been a cornerstone of Red Bull's success, and having Gwen lead it soon reflects the importance we continue to place on developing the next generation of F1 talent.
"We want to recognise another time today the extraordinary contribution Helmut Marko has made over more than two decades creating and leading the Junior Programme. The Junior Programme has become the benchmark in F1 because of his vision, commitment and ability to identify and develop exceptional talents and he deserves enormous credit for that.
"As we continue to build the next chapter of Oracle Red Bull Racing, attracting leaders of Gwen's calibre is fundamental to achieving our ambitions. We're strengthening our high-performance organisation with outstanding people in every part of the business, and Gwen is an important addition of that journey. Together, we will build on an incredibly strong foundation while continuing to evolve the programme for the future."
Lagrue added: "Joining Oracle Red Bull Racing marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for me. After eleven memorable years at Mercedes, I felt this was the right moment to take on a new challenge and continue growing personally and professionally.
"The Red Bull Junior Programme is one of the most respected and successful driver development programmes in motorsport. It has produced some of the greatest talents F1 has ever seen, and it is a real honour to have the opportunity to lead such a talented group of people and help shape its next chapter. I'm looking forward to working closely with Laurent as well as the entire Team and I am very thankful for this opportunity.
"Together, we have a fantastic framework to build on the programme's remarkable legacy, continue to evolve it for the future, and identify, develop and prepare the next generation of F1 race winners and World Champions, following a pattern Oracle Red Bull Racing has successfully repeated over the past 20 years."
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The arrival of a prominent figure from Mercedes will be a welcome at Red Bull, which has lost a series of high-profile engineers and team leaders in recent years.
Legendary designer Adrian Newey, former sporting director Jonathan Wheatley and technical director Rob Marshall all left for prominent roles at rival teams in the past two years, while long-serving team boss Christian Horner was sacked last July after 20 years in charge.
Earlier this month, ESPN reported that senior engineer Paul Monaghan will also leave for Cadillac, while Max Verstappen's long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will join McLaren in 2028.
After news of Lagrue's departure broke last week, Toto Wolff confirmed Mercedes would look to reshuffle the leadership of its young driver programme under recently-appointed deputy team principal Bradley Lord.
"Gwen has built up a fantastic team, we're about seven, eight or nine people that are running the junior programme going forward, with a handful of juniors," Wolff said. "With Bradley stepping up as a deputy principal, these things need to be carved out now. We want to do it together with Gwen."