‘I left Toto Wolff gob-smacked by taking Red Bull’s senior guy – then revealed my secret’

Mercedes have considerable power as one of F1’s superpowers but not everyone can be enticed away.

Ex Racing Point and Alpine team principal Otmar Sznafauer the tale of the time how he signed aerodynamics specialist Guru Johl out from Red Bull over the appeals of Mercedes.

Johl was having his tenure at Red Bull when it happened as he joined the team right in F1 2004. He have joined the Milton Keynes-based team, where he spent nine years, developing from the wind tunnel designer to the aerodynamic team chief.

There was an interest from Mercedes, but Johl’s next target was to sign to Szafnauer’s venture. The American team principal built a lot of credibility for himself during his time at Force India, which were renamed Racing Point later. During the 2010s, the British constructor got used to accomplishing a lot with very little, a skill that has helped the company successfully surmount many challenges.

Explaining the move on the High Performance podcast, Szafnauer explained: “I called Toto [Wolff], and I don’t know what we’re talking about, but I said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got this senior aerodynamicist guru coming from Red Bull to join us’.

“And he was like, ‘What? Why is he not coming to Mercedes?’ He couldn’t believe that a guy from Red Bull at a senior level would actually entertain going to Force India, but that’s because we had a reputation of, go there, it’s a good place to work.”

Since then, Johl has gone through a change with his team which is currently branded as Aston Martin. In 2023 he moved to AlphaTauri and became deputy head of aerodynamics but was then moved up to head of aerodynamics before the rebrand to VCARB in 2024.

Johl’s capture was another push in this direction the team’s boss, Szafnauer, wanted to talent in the team. Force India was definitely one of the smallest teams in terms of number of employees which placed them at a disadvantage in comparison to the racing giants.

‘There were 280 of us when I joined the company and there were 408 when I left’ he pointed out. “So I hired some people. All of them I hired personally. We jointly evaluated the areas of competency, which a Formula One team needed but which we lacked.

“Then we went out to recruit the best people that we could in those areas.” The last point, which I think is key, is recruitment – how do you convince such great people to quit working for Red Bull to join Force India? He said, ‘Well, you’ve got to make it a good place to work.’