Mercedes car design director Owen to leave at the end of the year
Mercedes has announced its director of car design John Owen will leave the Formula 1 team later this year.
Owen has been part of the set-up at Brackley – also under its previous guises of Honda and Brawn – since 2007, and Mercedes counts the 2026 car as the 17th chassis that he has had overall design responsibility for. The W17 will be launched online on Thursday ahead of the 2026 season, with Owen then stepping down later in the season.
A Mercedes spokesperson said Owen “has decided that now is the right time to take a break from F1 and that he will be leaving the team later this year to begin a period of gardening leave, after assuring the transition to his successor”. That promotion will come from within, as engineering director Giacomo Tortora will take over from Owen as director of car design, leading a group that is overseen by deputy technical director Simone Resta.
While Owen was a principal aerodynamicist within Brawn when it won its fairytale drivers’ and constructors’ championship double in 2009, he is credited with a further eight constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ championships leading the Mercedes design team since 2010.
Speaking prior to the introduction of ground effect cars about the favorite Mercedes he had worked on, Owen highlighted the point the team became truly competitive in the fight for victories prior to its maiden championship.
“Strangely, it would be the W04, our 2013 car,” Owen said. “It’s the car that suddenly delivered Mercedes to the front of the grid. We came second in the World Championship that year, we won three races, but the technological jump in the team’s capability and the way we designed the car from 2012 to 2013 was the biggest we have ever done and it set the scene for a lot of future developments and the success that we were fortunate to enjoy in subsequent years.”
Mercedes’ last constructors’ championship came in 2021, and it has won just seven races over the past four years as it struggled to get on top of the ground effect regulations that came to an end last season.
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