Hannah Schmitz is a British Formula 1 engineer and the Head of Race Strategy at Oracle Red Bull Racing. Frequently appearing on the pit wall and the podium to collect constructors' trophies, she is regarded as one of the most prominent and successful women in the sport. ¹²

Born Hannah McMillan on 2 May 1985, she attended Croydon High School before studying engineering, and has built her entire professional career at Red Bull. ¹

“Hannah Schmitz is a British Formula 1 engineer and the Head of Race Strategy at Oracle Red Bull Racing.”

Education

In 2009 she earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Cambridge, where she studied optimisation theory, regression analysis and statistical modelling — skills that map directly onto race strategy. At Cambridge she was Mechanical Team Leader of Cambridge University Eco Racing and led the team in its first World Solar Challenge across the Australian Outback. ¹³

Career at Red Bull

Schmitz joined Red Bull Racing in November 2009 as a Modelling and Strategy Engineer, developing new simulation techniques. She was promoted to Senior Strategy Engineer in 2011, then Principal Strategy Engineer in 2021, and from 2026 became Head of Race Strategy, succeeding Will Courtenay after his long-delayed move to McLaren. ¹⁴

Notable strategy calls

Schmitz has been credited as instrumental in Red Bull's 2022 and 2023 Constructors' Championships and in Max Verstappen's four consecutive Drivers' titles from 2021 to 2024. At the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix she made a bold third-stop call that won the race. At the 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix, with Verstappen starting 10th, a last-minute switch to start on softs set up a winning undercut, after which he praised his "insanely calm" strategist. At the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix she pitted Verstappen under an early safety car while McLaren stayed out — a contrarian, pre-planned move that won the race and kept the title fight alive. Of the moment she recalled, "everyone is like, 'Are you sure?' And I was like, 'Yeah, I really do.'" ¹⁵⁶

Recognition and role-model status

Schmitz is one of only a handful of women — fewer than a dozen — to collect a constructors' trophy on an F1 podium, doing so after the 2019 Brazilian and 2025 Qatar Grands Prix, and was named McLaren Applied's "Female Engineer of the Year" in 2022. In February 2026, Turn 6 at Melbourne's Albert Park was dedicated to Schmitz and Haas race engineer Laura Müller under the "In Her Corner" initiative for International Women's Day — the first time a Formula 1 corner has been named for women. She speaks candidly about the job, noting that as a woman, building authority on the pit wall "was harder to achieve in the beginning." ¹⁷⁸

The 2026 role

Leading the strategy group for the first time under the sweeping new regulations, Schmitz has framed 2026 as a shift from hands-on calls to building and training her team amid fresh uncertainty: "It's still a similar way of thinking about the problem. It's just different data, different variables... and less confidence in how they're all going to play out." ⁹

Bottom line

Schmitz combines a rigorous engineering background with the split-second decision-making of trackside strategy. Having spent more than 15 years rising through Red Bull's strategy group, her promotion to its top strategy role in 2026 confirms her as a key technical leader — and a visible role model — as the team navigates the new regulations. ¹²