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.

 

[soccerman17]

Would Prost come out of retirement given his love of ice racing?

 

[Bill Boddy]

How do they do it? Their designer admits that he cheated on purpose, so what penalty do they get? Starting from the pit lane which means being able to change the setup and go out on prime tyres to conserve the options for a low fuel run on new tyres when the temperature has dropped close to the optimum for the tyres.

A tap on the wrist with a wet flannel.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I reckon a dry flannel would be less painful as you can get a good bit of whip into a wet one...

 

[Brogan]

F1 is corrupt to the core and has been for a long, long time.

 

[Tuscan1969]

Surely the FIA can't just let them start from the pit lane and forget about it.....

My God they deliberately designed, built, fitted and were trying to race illegal wings to both cars.

Its not a;
"Oh we crashed one and just fitted this old thing we had lying around and we forgot it was not an approved part!"

and its not a case of;
"Oh these old things , they just flex a little bit"

this is a ;
"We added a special hidden spring to make the flap a moveable areodymaic aid despite knowing that the rules forbid moveable aerodynamic aids...."

And then they tried to say everyone else was doing it too.....playground politics....

Red Bull should be banned from the first two races in 2015....but of course His Bernieness would not like that cause its a Big name team with a local boy to attract the big crowd at Aus....hence breaking the rules will effectivley be ignored....well what else would you expect from Mr E?????

 

[Mephistopheles]

well what else wold you expect from Mr E?????

Batman to come along and kick his ass..

 

[Tuscan1969]

Mephistopheles good one - it took me a moment to get the reference!

 

[Mephistopheles]

Subtle in I...

 

[Brogan]

I was amazed but not surprised that nothing more was said nor done.

One can't help but wonder what would have happened if it had been another team (other than Ferrari).

 

[Mephistopheles]

If it had been McLaren then they would have been kicked out of the championship and it it had been Merc then judging from their illegal test last year then nothing would have happened to them due to them being an engine supplier..

Like you said Brogan F1 is rotten to the core, at present..

 

[cider_and_toast]

Half the battle was the fact that it was identified and dealt with at the track. Anyone wanting to carry it further would have been faced with a "it's been dealt with, move on" response. Yeah, I know, it was a clear attempt to cheat but it was spotted and in inverted comma's punished.

The other issue is, that the teams are very poor at collective action. They are too concerned that if they create a song and dance about this issue, someone may look a bit more closely at them. So they are in the long run, quite happy for this little indiscretion to have been dealt with. It may little difference to the race and no difference to the championship therefore it's a slap on the wrist, don't be naughty again and a couple of "phwoar that was close" type chuckles of a bottle of Austrian vino around the camp fire this winter.

Sad but true.

 

[Bill Boddy]

How long had they been using that design? Since Newey seems to know so much despite stepping aside for several months were they using it during his reign? Did they keep it for certain circuits? Why did they have wings that would pass scrutiny with them?

And who snitched????

 

[Mephistopheles]

Apart from the who snitched one those are the questions that need answering Bill Boddy

 

[Bill Boddy]

But that's the most interesting one. When BAR were done it was put down to a disgruntled ex-employee, could this be a certain designer who started work not too long ago with another team?

 

[cider_and_toast]

The one thing I haven't seen is a full published explanation for what they've done. I've heard a brief explanation from Saint Christian of done nothing wrong but not seen the full detail apart from whats been posted on here and a brief Scarbs blog entry.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Christian why are you picking on us Horner.

Edit

Because you are a cheating bunch of toss pots that why..

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

I seem to recall Horner saying the wing with that mechanism was new for Abu Dhabi, which is all very convenient.
I wonder if the McLaren test wing they brought to Abu Dhabi but didn't use (hmmm) had the same mechanism?

 

[marksawatsky]

I don't like all the cheating and lack of punishment for Red Bull but I gotta admit, it shows more ambition and out of the box thinking than some of the others. I suspect that if Ferrari had gone to such lengths for tiny gains, it wouldn't have lost Alonso (assuming it lost Alonso, nobody has said anything yet).

 

[FB]

The the FIA can only punish a team if the stewards find something wrong. Red Bull were found out at Abu Dhabi and were duly punished. I really don't understand why there needs to be a witch hunt against the team when they have been found out for stretching the rules, I would expect every car on the grid does not fully conform to every full stop and comma in the regulations but hey, it's Red Bull, so let's have a go.

Just on that point, can someone explain why Red Bull are so disliked? Is it because they have come in and upset the accepted order in F1? Christian Horner does no more or less than any other TP on the grid and, in fact, is probably more open to questions than many. It's not his fault journo's ask him things and he always gives a full answer which is more than many do.

Helmut Marko has probably over seen the most spectacular driver development program since the Elf school in the late 70's and Dietrich Mateschitz has funded two full F1 teams, both of which would probably have gone down the bog if it weren't for Red Bull money. But then they have won things which means we must dislike them doesn't it.

 

[Kewee]

A very interesting interview with Ross Brawn after his years at Ferrari and from memory during his year as TP for Brawn.
He stated quite simply that you have to push your design envelop right to the very limit of the regulations, in his words "if you don't you won't be competitive". He also stated that an inevitable result of pushing development to that degree means that at times you will cross the limits of the regulations. His words again "inevitability people will accuse you of cheating, though going beyond the limit of the regulations is not intentional, simply the result of having to live right on the edge to be competitive which is absolutely necessary if you want to win.
This is the nature of technology driven sport, the same issues arise with Americas Cup yachting. My answer is always the same, if you don't like it or understand that aspect of F1, go watch Rugby or Cricket, they're less complicated.