Mekies to Red Bull; this is the 'new' approach of his successor!

Alan Permane has had his baptism of fire as team principal of Racing Bulls in Belgium. It was a relatively successful weekend, with points for Liam Lawson. His 'new' approach is therefore working.

This is how it normally goes: the FIA designates three teams for each Friday of a Grand Prix weekend, whose technical boss must explain the updates to the media. Usually, this person is the technical boss or another leading figure in this department.

But after Racing Bulls had to appoint someone in Belgium last week for a brief chat with the media, Alan Permane was pushed forward - newly appointed as team boss of the Italian team, after Laurent Mekies had switched to Red Bull Racing.

Permane 'immensely proud'

While Mattia Spini - the Chief Race Engineer of the team - watched from a distance how Permane wanted to discuss the technical matters one last time, the team's spokeswoman said: "Only questions about technical things."

"Good luck with that", responded Permane, realizing that in his first media appearance, questions would also be asked about the new role. And indeed, that was the case, receiving questions among others from GPblog. The Brit briefly discussed his first weeks at the helm of Racing Bulls. "It's been exciting. Incredibly proud to be given this opportunity to lead this team and I'm looking forward to it," he said.

At Racing Bulls everything stays the same

Permane has thought about the direction he wants to take as team boss with Racing Bulls. But: "I think my plan at the moment is nothing changes. We're on a good trajectory. Things are working very, very well here. We've made a very nice car, it's a quick car and we go racing with a good spirit and that's the plan, to keep that going for now."

With Permane, there is another team boss who has a past at Renault, after Jonathan Wheatley (Sauber), Steve Nielsen (team manager of Alpine) and Ayao Komatsu (Haas). Coincidence? "Yes, it was a good environment to work in those days. I think we've all, Jonathan's been at Red Bull for a long, long time, so he's grown up there, and then Steve has also been out of the team for eight or nine years. So we can't all put it all down to Enstone."

Read also

You won’t believe Verstappen’s lap times at the Nordschleife — While driving as ‘Franz Hermann’

New era at Alpine: new CEO takes the wheel for bold transformation in Renault's world

McLaren shock change inbound? 'You can't say this anymore about Lando'