RB set the pace in the opening practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix. However the relationship between it and sister team Red Bull remains a point of concern for some of its rivals.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has been the most vocal on the subject. “No other major sport, to my knowledge, allows co-ownership of two teams that compete against each other,” he said during testing last week.
Red Bull purchased two F1 teams in consecutive years: First Jaguar at the end of 2004 and then Minardi a year later. They were respectively named Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso (Italian for ‘team Red Bull’). The latter has changed names twice since: First to AlphaTauri and, this year, RB.
In 2021 F1 introduced a budget cap intended to limit how much each team could spend. While Brown believes Red Bull are complying with the rules, he argues their ownership of two teams gives them an advantage under the financial restrictions.
“We now have the budget cap in place which was intended and is working, for the most part, to bring a level playing field to the sport, fiscally and in every other manner,” he said.
“I think the sport, as we’re now in the budget cap era, have moved on to where we’re trying to have 10 independent teams from a sporting, from a political, from a technical point of view.
“I think they’re very much playing by the rules, I have an issue with the rules and believe that FIA needs to address this.”
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New leadership has been installed at RB this year, for the first time in the history of Red Bull’s second team. The team has also said it will make greater use of parts designed by Red Bull Technology, which services both teams, as the rules allow.
“As Helmut [Marko, Red Bull motorsport consultant] has stated he’s going to maximise the opportunity, which is what you would do if you own two teams, and the rules are what they are today,” Brown continued. “But I think we’re going to find, if the intent of the cap and all sports is to have an equal playing field, then the way the rules are currently written, aren’t the same for everyone and you have pockets of teams also the whole ‘A-B team’ situation, that doesn’t have that level playing field. So I think we now need to, address it and the FIA needs to address it through the rules.”
RB hired Laurent Mekies from Ferrari to lead the team this year. He…
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