By Ian Lockwood
December 14 2005

Following on from the news that Red Bull Racing had pulled off the biggest recruitment coup in recent F1 history by luring Adrian Newey away from Mclaren, more top F1 staff have found the draw of the Red Bull rise is too hard to resist.

The close season is always a time of movement in F1 circles. Travelling team members can decide they have had enough of airport lounges and motorhomes, others are looking for fresh challenges, and many are on the lookout for a promotion or move to a better team.

Red Bull have already pulled off the biggest new signing of the close season by signing Adrian Newey from Mclaren, but the good news doesn't stop there.

www.grandprix.com have reported several other top signing for Red Bull Racing, and sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso. Renault have been on the losing end of many of the moves. This is not surprising as rivals get a two-fold advantage by taking a person with knowledge of a championship winning car, whilst also destabilising the team everyone has to beat.

Renault in particular suffering the loss of several top people, as other teams try to improve themselves and at the same time knock Renault down.

The biggest Renault - Red Bull defection is Chief Mechanic Jonathan Wheatley who will become team manager of Red Bull Racing, replacing longtime incumbent Dave Stubbs. Also Renault designer Rob Marshall has been lured to RBR. new siginings from other teams include two new race engineers with Kieran Pilbeam coming in from BAR and Humphrey Corbett arriving from Toyota. Sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso is also undergoing change with the departure of deputy technical director Andy Tilley and the arrival of Toyota's logistics manager Gianfranco Fantuzzi to run things for new team principal Franz Tost who was formerly at Williams.