Red Bull have never embraced convention. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many masterful marketing minds have toiled for hours in boardrooms to ensure that ‘conventional’ is the last thing you associate with the soft drink brand.
So naturally, their approach to running a Formula 1 team has been no different. Why own one F1 team when you can have a two-team operation instead?
Their junior squad – currently branded as AlphaTauri – is a unique team among its peers on the grid. All others aim for wins and championships. But AlphaTauri’s raison d’etre is simply to act as a finishing school, producing an endless supply of prospects to become Red Bull’s next grand prix winning driver. And having produced its second multiple world champion since its inception, the team formerly known as Toro Rosso has more than proved its worth.
Any other midfield team would have been demoralised to have suffered the drop in performance AlphaTauri endured in 2022. From a record points haul in 2021, knocking on the door of a top-five championship position, ground effect aerodynamics arrived and realigned the competition in the midfield – and not in their favour.
But the drivers are always the focus at AlphaTauri, not the team itself. And 2023 will truly be a critical year for both occupants of the AT04.
With the ever-present Pierre Gasly finally breaking free from Red Bull purgatory, Nyck de Vries takes his place as the oldest driver to enter into their debut season since Brendon Hartley raced for the same team in 2018. De Vries is older than more than half the grid, but his single-seater pedigree is formidable. He becomes the fifth of six Formula 2 champions to reach the world championship as well as the first Formula E world champion to get into Formula 1 after winning the all-electric series crown.
One key advantage De Vries has over his fellow 2023 rookies is a grand prix already under his belt. Unexpectedly stepping into Alexander Albon’s Williams at Monza, De Vries looked anything but a debutant as he delivered two points in ninth place in his first grand prix. A result that will have injected immense confidence into him as he prepares for his first year as a full-time F1 driver.
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He’ll hope to last longer than Hartley, who was out after little more than one season. Thankfully, he’s already fluent in the ways of a modern Formula 1 car. He embarked on an…
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