The Mercedes driver scout concerned in discovering Kimi Antonelli is leaving the staff to hitch rivals Pink Bull.
Frenchman Gwen Lagrue, 50, is to take up a brand new position main Pink Bull’s driver growth programme.
Lagrue has been recruited primarily as a alternative for Helmut Marko, who retired from his long-time role as Red Bull’s motorsport adviser on the finish of final yr.
Pink Bull staff principal Laurent Mekies, Mercedes and Lagrue himself all declined to remark when approached by BBC Sport.
It’s unclear when Lagrue might be free to take up his new position.
Mercedes and Pink Bull are within the strategy of negotiating an settlement that might see him launched from his present contract as driver growth adviser to the Mercedes F1 staff.
At Mercedes, his position will probably be crammed by a minor reshuffle of the present young-driver programme, arguably the best in F1.
Bradley Lord, who was already concerned, was just lately promoted to deputy staff principal from his earlier place as communications director and senior adviser to staff principal Toto Wolff.
Mercedes have a staff of as much as 10 individuals analysing the junior classes, proper all the way down to the very junior ranges of karting, to seek out promising new expertise.
Lagrue has labored for Mercedes for a decade.
George Russell was the primary signing for the staff following his appointment, a couple of months after the Briton famously approached Wolff and gave him a PowerPoint presentation arguing his case to be a part of the Mercedes junior programme.
Russell has been supported by Mercedes since then as he accomplished the junior classes, was seconded to Williams for an F1 debut in 2019 after which promoted to Mercedes in 2022.
Mercedes signed Antonelli when he was an 11-year-old racing in go-karts and he has been mentored by Mercedes by an accelerated programme that noticed him exchange Lewis Hamilton within the staff when the seven-time champion joined Ferrari at the beginning of 2025.
Antonelli is proving his billing as a generational expertise in dominating the F1 world championship in solely his second season.
The 19-year-old has received 5 races and set six pole positions in 10 grands prix up to now this season earlier than Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix and is main Russell by 25 factors.
Amongst different successes at Mercedes whereas Lagrue has been working the young-driver programme are Frenchman Esteban Ocon, who was their junior driver and has been managed by them by his 10-year profession in F1 at Manor, Power India, Renault/Alpine and now Haas, and their present F1 reserve driver, the Dane Frederik Vesti.
Lagrue additionally personally supported present Williams driver Alex Albon when he was dropped by Marko from Pink Bull’s driver growth programme in 2016.
He helped Albon with profession recommendation and in sourcing funds to additional his profession till the Anglo-Thai rejoined Pink Bull for his F1 debut for the second staff, then known as Toro Rosso, in 2019.
