Red Bull F1 designer 'always looks stressed' as Max Verstappen staff nickname revealed by insider

Verstappen in Barcelona — Photo: © IMAGO

Red Bull

Red Bull designer 'always looks stressed' as Max Verstappen staff nickname revealed by F1 insider

Wouldn't you be stressed too?

Chris Deeley

Monday 13 July 2026 23:15

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Being a fly on the wall at any F1 team, at any time, must be fascinating.

Being a fly on the wall at Red Bull, through their chaotic 2025? Unbelievable. Fortunately, that's exactly what sports writer Matt Majendie did for his new book Inside Red Bull Racing: A season with F1's most thrilling team, and he's recently been sharing some of the things he noticed.

One of those things? Technical director Pierre Wache is 'one of the most stressed individuals' he's ever encountered, while Will Courtenay and Hannah Schmitz got name-dropped as some of the coolest.

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Majendie appeared on the Road to Success podcast recently to discuss some of the things he learned while spending a season embedded with the team, and discussed how the various stresses of the high-pressure environment impacts different people, including on the team's 'tyre whisperer'.

Red Bull insider: Wache always looks stressed

"One of the most stressed individuals I've ever seen is Pierre Wache," he revealed. "The technical director, he always looks stressed. He's wears this great sort of Gallic look of looking under pressure and stressed, even when maybe the pressure's not so there.

"There's a point when Max, I think, gets a pole maybe at Imola when he basically says on the race radio, 'Chill out, Pierre', which I thought was quite funny because obviously he'd been stressing whatever."

He continued: "So you see different personalities. I remember a tyre deflating in the final race in Abu Dhabi just before going out for qualifying, and seeing Paul Monaghan and this guy called Greg Reeson, who gets called the tyre whisperer.

"He's the guy in charge of Max Verstappen's tyres. Sort of working, performing CPR, and in that moment, you see the utter, utter stress and the adrenaline rush of those guys fighting that fire at that specific moment.

"So you do have pockets of it, but it's such a high pressure, high stress world that people can remain amazingly cool with it. I think listening to the team radio, like a strategist, Will Courtenay, Hannah Schmitz, they are always, always the coolest people.

"They feel like there's the highest pressure because they've got to make these calls. At this moment, you've got to pit now. VSC, safety car, whatever happens. They're making those calls, and I'm so impressed."

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F1 Red Bull Max Verstappen Pierre Wache