Alan Permane is a British Formula 1 engineer and the Team Principal of Racing Bulls, a role he took up in July 2025. Born on 4 February 1967 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, he is one of the longest-serving figures in the sport, having spent 34 years at the Enstone-based team across its many identities. ¹²

More than three decades at Enstone

Permane joined Benetton in 1989 as a test electronics engineer after completing an electronic-engineering apprenticeship, recalling: "I'd just turned 22, I'd got a job in Formula 1. It was awesome." He worked his way onto the race team and became a junior race engineer in 1996 alongside Jean Alesi, before serving as a full race engineer from 1997 to 2006, working with drivers including Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli — he has called Trulli's 2004 Monaco win "pretty special." During this period the team, racing as Renault, won back-to-back Drivers' and Constructors' titles with Fernando Alonso in 2005 and 2006. ¹²

“Rather than setting headline targets, he has stressed continuity — "keep doing what we've been doing .”

Chief race engineer and Sporting Director

From 2007 he was Renault's chief race engineer, and in 2011 he took on a wider remit overseeing all trackside engineering. In 2012 he became Sporting Director, a senior trackside role he held as the team passed through its Lotus, Renault and Alpine rebrandings. A familiar voice on the pit wall, he was at the centre of a much-quoted 2013 radio exchange when he asked Kimi Räikkönen to let team-mate Romain Grosjean past at the Indian Grand Prix — prompting Räikkönen's "Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing" — an episode Permane has since said he would "definitely" handle differently today. After 34 years, he and Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer were released by Alpine ahead of the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix. ¹²

Move to Faenza and promotion

Permane joined the Visa Cash App RB team — the Faenza-based outfit now called Racing Bulls — as racing director in January 2024, reporting to Team Principal Laurent Mekies. When Mekies was promoted to lead Red Bull Racing following Christian Horner's departure, Permane was elevated to Team Principal of Racing Bulls in July 2025, learning of the opportunity the week after Silverstone when Red Bull senior management called. He has described the move as a surprise — "it's not something that's ever been on my radar, but ... when Red Bull come knocking you can't say no" — and a big shift for a self-described "trackside guy." Mekies, who recommended him, told him simply: "Just be yourself and you'll be fine." ¹³

Management style

Permane frames his approach around the people-management instincts honed over a long engineering career, while acknowledging that leading non-trackside staff such as designers and the production team is new territory. Having managed groups of 60 to 100 people before, he describes the team-principal role as "another step" in scope. Rather than setting headline targets, he has stressed continuity — "keep doing what we've been doing ... keep that trajectory" — and "getting the best out of the cars, the designers and the production team have given us to race." He continues to report to CEO Peter Bayer, who handles the commercial and structural side. ³⁴

A respected paddock figure

Permane's standing in the sport was underlined by the reaction to his 2023 exit. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff called him "one of the rocks of F1" and "certainly someone with a lot of knowledge" — an unusually warm tribute from a rival principal for a departing competitor. That reputation, built over three-and-a-half decades of trackside work spanning multiple title campaigns and dozens of drivers, is part of what made him an obvious internal candidate when Red Bull needed to fill the Racing Bulls role at short notice. ²

Why he matters

Permane brings rare institutional depth: hands-on engineering, championship-winning trackside leadership and decades of paddock relationships. For a young, transitioning Racing Bulls squad, he provides steady, experienced leadership into the 2026 regulations — a calming, knowledgeable presence at the head of a line-up built around an established midfielder in Liam Lawson and a teenage rookie in Arvid Lindblad. His decades on the pit wall give him a direct feel for how races are won and lost in execution, not just in the wind tunnel. ²⁴

What this means for 2026

The timing of his promotion is significant: he inherited the team just as F1 entered its biggest technical reset in a generation. Permane's pitch is explicitly one of stability rather than revolution — protecting the upward momentum built under Mekies and Bayer while the team adapts to all-new chassis and power-unit rules. His deep grasp of sporting regulations and trackside operations is well matched to a season in which operational execution and rule interpretation can be decisive. ³⁴

Bottom line

A lifelong race engineer who became a team boss almost by accident, Permane pairs deep technical and operational knowledge with a pragmatic, continuity-focused style — now steering Racing Bulls through F1's new-rules era. ¹³