End of the Road for AlphaTauri

This weekend will mark the end of a number of eras surrounding Scuderia AlphaTauri, though Alfa Romeo’s departure has seemingly captured more headlines.

The Red Bull-owned junior team began life back in 1985 when Giancarlo Minardi began to field entries in Formula 1. Minardi made a brand of being an underdog, competing with very little funding but still scrapping by for years.

The Italian team spent 21 years on the F1 grid, never scoring a podium and leading only a single lap in competition. Minardi also generally avoided pay drivers, instead focusing on employing young talent. Fernando Alonso began his career at Minardi, as did Mark Webber and Giancarlo Fisichella. Alex Zanardi and Justin Wilson also competed for Minardi before moving on to find success in IndyCar. A driver named Jos Verstappen also competed as the team’s lead driver for a team in the early 2000s.

In 2001, Minardi was sold to Paul Stoddart, who continued to field the team as Minardi out of its shop in Faenza, Italy. Stoddart also served as team principal and was known for doing a lot of talking, threatening to pull out of F1 three times in 2004 and 2005 alone while also frequently calling for Max Mosely to be relieved of his duties as FIA President.

After 2005, Stoddart sold his team to Red Bull, with the gentleman’s agreement that the team remain open and based in Faenza. Red Bull Racing had just completed its first season as an F1 team and decided simply to buy a team to field rookie drivers as part of its fledging Red Bull Junior program.

The newly renamed Scuderia Toro Rosso (Italian for “Team Red Bull”) retained an agreement Minardi had with the FIA that allowed the team to run rev-limited V10 engines instead of the standard V8s of the time. To this day, the Toro Rosso STR1 is the final car that ran V10 engines in F1 history (sound way up):

In addition to fielding almost all Red Bull Juniors since 2006, the team has also proven very helpful for Red Bull at various points. The STR2 inherited a Ferrari engine deal that RBR had in 2006 before getting cold feet, allowing the main team to move over to Renault in 2007 instead of waiting out its Ferrari contract.

Toro Rosso would stay with their Italian peers all the way until 2014 when the team finally joined the main team with Renault. Later in 2018, Toro Rosso became the first Red Bull-owned team to run Honda engines, as the main…