Mercedes is to reshuffle its senior technical Formula 1 team later this year with long-serving director of car design John Owen set to leave, The Race can reveal.

Owen is a Mercedes stalwart and has been instrumental in the creation of all its world championship winning cars of the modern era.

Having started his F1 career at Sauber, Owen originally joined what's now Mercedes when it was the Honda works team in 2007.

Starting out as a principal aerodynamicist, he carried that title into the Brawn era, before he stepped up to become chief designer at the relaunched Mercedes team for the start of the 2010 season.

Having then helped create some of Mercedes' most dominant F1 machinery through the early turbo hybrid era, Owen was promoted to the role of director of car design in early 2023.

His change of title came at a time when Mercedes needed to restructure its organisation in response to the different challenges of the cost cap.

As part of a reshuffle that was instigated soon after when current technical director James Allison took over from Mike Elliot, Owen was given responsibilities that helped him focus on car design rather than wasting time on budget administration.

Some of his previous duties were shared with engineering director Giacomo Tortora, whose key roles were looking after the design office and organisational development.

Since then both have worked closely with Allison and deputy technical director Simone Resta.

Following the sign off of Mercedes' 2026 car, which will be the 17th design that Owen has overseen for the German manufacturer, he has decided that is now the right time to take a break and step down from his role.

Mercedes has duly elected to promote Tortora to become its new director of car design, and Owen will remain on board until the middle of the season to help ensure a smooth transition process. Tortora will report directly into Resta.

After the handover phase is complete, it is understood that Owen is set to take a career break and move onto 'gardening leave' before deciding his next career step.

The right culture

Despite the major role that he played in helping create title-winning cars for Mercedes, Owen remained humble and preferred to stay out of the spotlight.

He was a big believer that success in F1 could only be achieved with the right culture in place – something he pushed hard to ensure was embraced at Brackley.

Speaking to The Race in 2021, Owen reckoned that Mercedes had helped create an environment that no other squad had been able to match.

"Lots of people say they have a good culture but they kind of don't," he explained.

"And I think probably if there's one thing this team has as a unique thing, it's that.

"People who join us find it a really, really great place, a really inspirational place almost to the point where they sometimes don't believe it's true for a while.

"It takes them quite a number of months to really settle in and think, 'no, you really are in a safe environment'. And I think people that leave get a bit of shock."