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.

 

[Il_leone]

Red Bull are a global marketing company .. they don't actually own the real Red Bull drink which is from Thailand . They just took the product and marketed it worldwide . Their main market is America where they snuck under the noses of Coca Cola and Pepsi. Their brand is associated with youthful energy and extreme sports

Red Bull have probably outlived their purpose in F1 unless they want to be the greatest F1 team ever... only Mclaren, Williams, Lotus and Ferrari have won more races than them


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Mclaren started as an F1 team although Ron is making them into more of a technology company - they will not quit F1 because it is the pinnacle of showing their technology and engineering abilities like Williams. The only difference Mclaren run things like a corporate company whereas Williams is more like a private business run by a family

 

[cider_and_toast]

McLaren are doing nothing different than Williams have already done, or Lotus long before them.

 

[Il_leone]

cider_and_toast They do the odd sportscar now and then but it does disrupt their f1 programme in splitting resources

 

[cider_and_toast]

Really?

Williams Advanced Engineering is the technology and engineering services business of the Williams Group that includes the Williams Martini Racing Formula One Team. Based in the United Kingdom, it is located in a dedicated 3,800m sq. facility adjacent to Williams Formula One facilities.

Williams Advanced Engineering provides world class technical innovation, engineering, testing and manufacturing services to deliver energy efficient performance technologies. Its target markets are: Automotive, Motorsport, Civil Aerospace, Defence (Land, Sea, Air), Renewable Energy and Sports Science.

and

WHP was first established in 2008 and immediately set about developing a new flywheel energy recovery system for the Williams F1 Team after the introduction of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) into Formula One for the 2009 season. While other teams were pouring their efforts into electric battery systems, Williams F1 opted to go down the flywheel route because of a strong belief in the technology's wider applications. Whilst it was never raced in Formula One due to technical changes, WHP has since seen its technology adapted for a range of applications. For example, the Audi R18 hybrid car that won the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours used a WHP flywheel. WHP has also seen its flywheel technology introduced into a series of buses as part of a deal with the Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK's biggest transport operators. In April 2014, Williams Hybrid Power was sold to GKN

 

[Dash Racing]

Is it also worth pointing out that both Williams and McLaren have contributed tech to Formula E? Yes, they're splitting resources a little, but a lot of what they're investing research and development into is likely to pay dividends into their F1 programs. What they learn from Formula E, for example, is likely to greatly improve their understanding of KERS and batteries.

Also, if Red Bull pulls out of F1, I do wonder if Formula E would be something they'll consider putting money into? It appeals to a totally different market than F1, and being new and fresh and eco-friendly, I'd imagine it might appeal on the corporate front.

 

[FB]

Red Bull pumps millions in to all sorts of sports, as they want to market their fizzy drinks. Never forget that they also support many drivers in lower formulas, sports cars, rallying and countless other motor sports series as well as countless other sports. They have replaced much of the tobacco money in motor sport and, as much as I wouldn't drink a can of Red Bull even if someone offered to pay me, they have kept many sports afloat so let's not be too harsh.

Just on the drink, Dietrich Mateschitz got the inspiration from a Thai drink and the company is jointly owned him and the founder of the Krating Daeng drink Chaleo Yoovidhay who each own 49% of the company.

 

[Brogan]

Horner claims Red Bull never had the level of dominance Mercedes currently has.

...when we were performing we never had the level of dominance that we are seeing, nowhere near.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118138

 

[Bill Boddy]

An average of 1.9 seconds on the first lap?

"At any point in time that we did show a bit of form, the rules changed and we had to adapt to that." Especially when it came to tyres halfway through the season.

 

[sushifiesta]

Pretty much all the regulation changes Christian Horner is talking about that were "done to cripple Red Bull" were to close loopholes. Double diffusers were not in the spirit of the regulations so were eventually banned. Flexible bodywork is explicitly banned by the regulations. Off-throttle blowing of the diffuser spat in the face of the new drive towards efficiency in F1. Etc. etc. If he's going to make calls for the FIA to cripple Mercedes he needs to bring evidence of some way they're bending the rules.

I'll give him one thing though, Mercedes are more dominant than Red Bull ever were. There were 6 and 7 winners from other teams in Red Bull's most dominant years (2011 and 2013), but only 3 non-Mercedes wins last year. How much of that is just down to Webber seemingly falling off a cliff post-2010 I'll leave to you to decide. Vettel in 2011/2013 was more dominant than Hamilton in 2014 in the drivers championship, but as a whole team Mercedes beat the record for number of wins in a season in 2014.

 

[Bill Boddy]

Neither of those teams have been as dominant as Alfa Romeo were in 1950. The only race they did not win was the Indianapolis 500.

So one team dominance is not an unknown happening.

 

[soccerman17]

Why do we never hear about Chaleo Yoovidhay?

 

[sushifiesta]

The most dominant would be McLaren in 1988 Bill Boddy , with 15 out of 16 race wins.

 

[teabagyokel]

It would be terrible if a team won 9 races in a row, even getting a whinging, geriatric, mediocre Australian onto the podium despite starting in reverse.

 

[Bill Boddy]

In terms of numbers sushifiesta you are right, but don't forget that the only race not won by the Alfas was Indie. Just what that was doing on the calendar heaven only knows, the cars were nothing like F1 or F2 cars.

 

[Incubus]

PEDANTIC ALERT
That isn't quite true Bill Boddy , as the majority of F1 Grand Prix in 1950 were not won by Alfa.

Unless of course you did mean to refer strictly to the small percentage of those that counted for the world drivers' championship?

 

[Kewee]

My favourite GP car of all time, the Alfa 159. Its final stage of development. 1479cc straight eight supercharged developing 425bhp with extraordinary fuel use of 1.5mpg. That finally killed it but oh what a wonderful car. Sorry this is a little of topic but I wanted to respond to Bill Boddy and Incubus.

 

[Il_leone]

cider_and_toast I stand corrected

 

[Il_leone]

Mclaren Honda was the most dominant car in 1988 simply because only two engines were still developing turbos- Ferrari who thought they found the key following the back end of 1987 and Honda who had the best engine .

It turned out Ferrari's turbo was fuel thirsty and could not keep up with Honda who found more power over the winter and Mclaren finally nailed the car for Senna and Prost to come out trouncing the rest

Williams Renault 1992 - that car was miles quicker than anything else - nearly 2 seconds a lap and in some cases 3 seconds a lap

Ferrari 2002 and 2004 - bulletproof and added with superior Bridgestones it was around at least 1 second a lap faster in Schumacher's hands

Red Bull - the dominant years 2011 and 2013 - the most aerodynamically effected car such that in clear air it seems to be able to gain huge margins where Vettel just use to disappear into the distance

 

[Kewee]

cider_and_toast They do the odd sportscar now and then but it does disrupt their f1 programme in splitting resources

Rather than disrupting, both programs may benefit from one another by cross pollination, sharing information. Even testing technology that can only be used directly on one, can speed up the development of related ideas on the other.

 

[sushifiesta]

Kvyat's gearbox failure was an oil pressure issue and nothing to do with engine vibrations (so presumably not Renault's fault):
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118145

Red Bull and Renault need to kiss and make up.