Rob Marshall

DRAWING THE RACING LINE

From a teenage project rebuilding a vintage motorcycle to concept design at Rolls Royce and on to dreaming up championship-winning Formula One machinery, our Chief Engineering Officer, Rob Marshall, has been taking on major design projects all his life. Born in Taunton, Somerset in the UK in 1968, Rob developed a passion for machinery early in life, prompted in large part by his father's work and interests.

"My father was also an engineer and worked for a company that made paper-making machines," says Rob. "He had a lathe, so we were always building bits and pieces. For example, on my 16th birthday I got given a 1930 AJS motorcycle in the form of two tea chests full of parts and I had to figure all that out. There was a lot of engineering going on in our house. My dad hated gardening but loved steam engines, so he built a steam lawn mower."

Rob's boyhood fascination took him to Cardiff University, where he naturally studied mechanical engineering and then eventually to a career in aerospace, working for Rolls Royce. "I worked in the advance project design department in Bristol on military concepts, engines and that sort of thing. It was a great job, genuinely interesting," he explains.

By the late 1990s Marshall was ready to move on however, and looking to move into motor sport began canvassing teams. "I kind of always fancied moving into motorsport but I'd never had any luck when I wrote letters off and I never got offered any jobs," he admits. That changed in 1998 when he wrote to every Formula One team and finally landed a job at Benetton.

After its Michael Schumacher-inspired mid-'90s heyday the team was going through a period of transition, however, and Marshall's early years in Formula One were not easy. "The 1998 car was, frankly, a bit rubbish and we had a succession of not-so-great cars until Benetton became Renault, which it did in name in 2002. We struggled with the engine initially, but eventually it got better."

After Fernando Alonso scored his first win in the team's RS23 at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix, the 2004 car scored another win, in the hands of Jarno Trulli at Monaco Grand Prix. The curve was clearly upwards and the following year, Rob and his team delivered on that potential, with the R25 taking Alonso to his first title win. Despite the success, Rob, by then head of mechanical design at the team, moved on to Red Bull Racing, where he took on the role of chief designer.

"I never saw it as a step back, moving from a team that won championships to a new team," he explains. "It was simply a different challenge, and a much more daunting one. Fortunately, it was made easier by the fact that were some very good people working here."

The result has been an even greater wave of success that has seen Rob and the team win multiple championships. However, despite reaping success across both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships, there is no sign of Marshall getting jaded, especially with the arrival, last year of another major set of regulation changes that have once again reset the bar in terms of engineering challenges.

"There is always another problem to worry about," he says. "There's never a part of the car you're completely happy with. Even if you've just finished one bit and you think it's brilliant, give it a day or two and you find yourself thinking 'I wish I'd done this or that'. Or you see someone else's solution and they've done a better job and you feel a bit sore and want to go away and do an even better job.

"Formula One is a constantly moving target," he concludes. "Nothing is ever good enough. Even if you are winning the championship by a country mile your car is still not good enough. There is no ceiling to what you can do. There is always a way of making the car better."