Technical director Willis leaves Red Bull

NUERBURGRING, Germany (Reuters) - Red Bull technical director Geoff Willis has left the race-winning Formula One team after his job was axed.

"His position has been made redundant," said a spokeswoman at the German Grand Prix on Friday.

The Briton had worked closely with chief technical officer Adrian Newey at Red Bull technology, the company that has designed winning cars for both the Red Bull and Toro Rosso teams.

Newey, Formula One's leading designer whose cars won multiple championships when he was at Williams and McLaren, told a news conference he would not have to take on any extra responsibilities.

"My role and my daily way of operating will stay exactly the same as it is," he said.

"We have five very senior people from the next level down and I will be expecting them to take on more responsibility for their individual engineering departments and really run that in a way which means we don't actually need a single technical director," he said.

Teams are having to cut costs in the face of the global economic crisis, with Formula One due to slash budgets to the levels of the early 1990s by the end of 2011.

Toro Rosso won last year's Italian Grand Prix with Sebastian Vettel, who moved to Red Bull and has won in China and Britain this season. Red Bull are currently second in the constructors' championship to Brawn GP.

Willis was technical director at Honda until July 2007.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Justin Palmer and Alison Wildey)