Visa Cash App RB, the new name for the team previously known as AlphaTauri, will jar more than a little with the grander names on the grid like Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren.
But is there really anything significant about a team making a marketing-led change of identity? Whether the grievance is the choice of a new name or loss of an old one, it feels like this ship sailed a long time ago.
F1 has been littered with dreary marketing names for years. It’s had teams named after refrigerators (LEC) and real estate companies (Leyton House).
The practice hasn’t been confined to teams. We’ve seen engines named after computers (Acer). One team even used the names of two different fashion brands (owned by the same company) for its chassis and engine (Benetton-Playlife).
Then there’s the phenomenon of over-long (or ‘under-edited’) names. Surely no one outside Mercedes ever referred to Lewis Hamilton’s last world championship-winning car by its full name of ‘F1 W11 EQ Performance’, instead of just ‘W11’? And who could be bothered to call the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix by its exhausting official title ‘Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia Romagna’?
Indulging the creators of these tedious titles feels like sycophancy. But there is an easy workaround: Ignore it.
Is anyone actually going to say “there goes Daniel Ricciardo on a quick lap in the Visa Cash App RB”? I very much doubt it. The shorthand ‘RB’ will surely be preferred by those outside the team and Formula 1’s official content channel. (Even ‘VCARB’, a shorthand Red Bull have used, feels a bit much).
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Do the teams’ marketing divisions actually expect to trot out these titles, particularly the more polysyllabic ones, every time we see their products? Again, I have my doubts. After all, even F1’s drivers aren’t drilled to rattle off a roster of sponsors every time a microphone is thrust at them, as is the fashion in IndyCar.
I suspect some of the hostility towards ‘Visa Cash App RB’ is rooted in the view that F1 is becoming more ‘Americanised’ under Liberty Media. That may be true, but you can’t pretend these nonsense names only started to appear in the last few years.
For me the greater pity is the how so much of F1’s heritage has been lost over the years. This has often happened…
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