Mercedes scout who found Antonelli set to join Red Bull

Gwen Lagrue, the Mercedes driver scout credited with helping discover Kimi Antonelli, is set to join Red Bull and lead its driver development programme. The move would put one of Mercedes’ most experienced junior-team figures inside a rival operation that has built its identity around finding and promoting young drivers early.

BBC Sport identified Lagrue as a 50-year-old Frenchman who spent more than a decade at Mercedes. During that time, he played a major role in identifying and nurturing George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli, whose rise from karting to a Mercedes race seat for 2025 made him the clearest success story of the team’s academy pipeline. Lagrue’s name has become closely tied to the structure that helped Mercedes turn junior scouting into a competitive advantage.

An image caption with the BBC Sport story showed Lagrue alongside Toto Wolff and Mercedes junior driver James Anagnostiadis, a reminder of how embedded he was in the team’s development ladder. Mercedes also thanked him in a social post, saying he had helped develop many young drivers, including current Formula 1 drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, and had made a fantastic contribution to building a successor to the original Mercedes-Benz junior structure.

At Red Bull, Lagrue is being lined up for a role that several reports describe as the next step in the team’s driver-development hierarchy, with some casting him as a successor to Helmut Marko’s long-running junior programme position. Motorsport-related reports said the move was still being negotiated and that no official start date had been confirmed, while one said he was expected to begin next year if the deal is finalized. Mercedes has not publicly commented.

The switch matters well beyond one personnel change. Red Bull has long treated its junior ranks as a pipeline for future race seats, while Mercedes has used its academy to build its own bench of elite prospects. Taking Lagrue from one camp to the other hands Red Bull a veteran talent-spotter who helped identify two of Mercedes’ most important modern drivers, and it leaves Mercedes without one of the people most closely associated with its next generation of stars.