Current Red Bull Racing

Red Bull Racing

FIA Entry: Red Bull Racing Renault
Car 1: Sebastien Vettel
Car 2: Mark Webber
Engine: Renault V8
Team Owner: Dietrich Mateschitz
Team Principal: Christian Horner
Chief Technical: Office Adrian Newey
Chief Designer: Rob Marshall
Race Engineer Car 1: Guillaume “Rocky” Rocquelin
Race Engineer Car 2: Ciaron Pilbeam

Stats as of end 2010

First Entered 2005
Races Entered 107
Race Wins 15
Pole Positions 20
Fastest Laps 12
Driver World Championships 1
Constructor World Championships 1

Team History

Before Red Bull

In 1997 Paul Stewart, aided by his father Jackie and the Ford Motor Company, made the leap from F3000 to F1 as an entrant. Jonny Herbert won 1 race for the Stewart team before it was sold off to Ford who re-branded the cars as Jaguar.

Ford stuck with it through thick and thin (mainly thin) through to the end of 2004 before selling the team to Dietrich Mateschitz, who owns the Red Bull drinks brand, for $1 on the understanding he invested $400 million over 3 years

Red Bull Racing

With Christian Horner installed as team principal, McLaren refugee David Coulthard and Christian Klien as the drivers Red Bull went racing. Their first season was certainly more successful than Jaguar had managed, even with the same Cosworth power plant, with Coulthard managing a 4th place at the European Grand Prix and the team finishing 7th in the Constructors Championship.

Adrian Newey joined from McLaren as chief designer for 2006 and Red Bull swapped to Ferrari engines. Coulthard managed a podium at his "home" race in Monaco prompting Christian Horner to jump naked, other than wearing a red cape, into a swimming pool.

Christian Klien, who shared the car with Vitantonio Liuzzi in 2005 and Robert Doornbos in 2006, departed the team for 2007 and was replaced by Mark Webber. The RB3 was the first full "Newey" car and was coupled with a Renault motor. The car was very unreliable, suffering from a variety of different problems but Webber managed a podium at the European Grand Prix and the team finished 5th in the WCC.

Retaining the same engine and drivers for 2008 Red Bull slipped back to 7th in the WCC and again only managed a single podium, for Coulthard in Canada, but the reliability issues which plagued the car the previous season were mainly resolved.

2009 was Red Bull's break through year. With Coulthard having retired Webber was joined by Red Bull junior driver Sebastien Vettel. The new rules allowed Newey to design a car which challenged for both the Drivers and Constructors Championship. Webber won 2 races, Vettel 4 and the team climbed to 2nd in WCC taking 3 pole positions en-route.

In 2010 Red Bull justified Mateschitz's investment winning the Constructors title and Vettel the Drivers Championship. They won 9 races through the season, 5 for Vettel and 4 for Webber and took 10 poles. Webber led the title race for much of the season but it was the 23 year old Vettel who stole the title in the last race of the season and became the youngest Champion as a result.

2011 sees the team retain the same driver line up as 2010 and continue with Renault engine power in the new RB7 car.
 
Or its all about the kerching kerching. I bet they are all being appointed at least one position higher than they were at Red Bull with a higher wage.

Its all about realising your worth and stepping up the career ladder like in any job and if Newy is a fixture at Red Bull then they are all probably thinking they need to go elsewhere to get higher up.
 
Williams had 7 years(although they conspired to lose 3 of the drivers championships) and Ferrari had 5 as the super team so 4 is not the longest we've had but it is true that what goes up must come down.
 
I'm sure Renault are pleased by that comment.


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It would be remiss of them not to at this point - it doesn't necessarily mean they will but they need to have some plan in place in case the Renault engine continues to have problems.
 
Who would they change to? I can't see Ferrari or Merc wanting to supply their biggest rival for the constructors championship. Honda are firmly in bed with McLaren so I think you may be right with cosworth if they decide to develop an engine in the future.
 
It's been known since the 2nd Bahrain test that the RB10's problems centred on cooling and software problems. There allegedly is nothing wrong with the engine per se, it all comes down to faulty coordination/communications between the different components.

Yesterday, Horner was quoted saying they had the RB10's cooling problems fixed. I think much of the car's overheating problems stemmed from the fact that Newey located the energy store beneath the fuel cell, which itself is buried within the survival cell. Hardly the most propitious location for a component with such pronounced cooling demands.

As for the software problem, I only found out today that this is of Red Bull's own creation. Marko is quoted saying "they" (Red Bull) wrote it for Renault. So this mess is less of Renault's creation than I had been believing.
 
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