Adrian Newey might be shuffled into a non-Formula 1 role at Red Bull Racing, according to Germany's Auto Motor und Sport.
Correspondent Michael Schmidt explains that the reason is because of the budget cap, as the team seeks a way to make the most of the budget cap rules.
"The large teams continue to operate with 800 to 1000 employees because they don't want to lose good people to the competition," he said. "They would rather put their high earners into other projects and only let them work part-time in Formula 1."
Currently, each team's three highest earners are exempt from the spending cap - and so Newey moving to a non-F1 project would free up a lot of budget for other prominent specialists.
"The championship-winning team has lost a lot of people to the competition recently," Schmidt explains.
He said Newey is therefore "apparently planning to focus entirely on the RB17 hypercar project in the medium term".
Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko denies that the hypercar is simply a way around the spending cap.
"Our opponents are interpreting it in such a way that the floor of the RB17 provides information for the Formula 1 car, which is of course complete nonsense." body check tags ::
