How RB wants to pick up Red Bull’s baton as F1’s fun team

Following its first Hollywood tie-up with the blockbuster Twisters, Red Bull’s sister team RB hopes to go much further to mix sport and entertainment, with the lofty goal of democratising access to the series.

Its name change from AlphaTauri to RB, Racing Bulls or VCARB was not without controversy, with its new moniker confusingly similar to the main team despite the aspirations to carve out its own image.

Red Bull was F1’s original fun team when it first joined F1 in 2005, known for its lavish parties and memorable PR activations. That includes its pit crew dressing up as clone troopers at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix to promote Star Wars Episode III, and one year later David Coulthard donning a Superman cape to promote Superman Returns.

Since then, Red Bull has grown into a winning machine, keeping most of its stunts away from the paddock while the race team gets down to business.

But in its new guise, sister team RB is trying to pick up the baton and run with it, after seeing the popularity its drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda enjoy among young F1 fans and landing blue-chip partners Visa and CashApp as title sponsors.

As the team unveiled its new identity in a Las Vegas launch, CEO Peter Bayer announced the outfit would try and use its young and fresh identity to marry F1 with off-track entertainment.

It held a car wash event at the Miami Grand Prix in Miami’s art-friendly Wynwood neighbourhood to launch a colourful one-off livery, and ahead of the Silverstone Grand Prix it landed a deal with Warner Bros. to promote the blockbuster Twisters, in the tradition of its parent team.

This is just the first step of Bayer’s off-track ambitions with the team, not just to give its partners value for money, but also to expand the team’s own following among the younger and more diverse demographic F1 as a whole is actively pursuing.

“The car wash in Miami was probably – really – the best example of what we’re trying to achieve,” Bayer tells Motorsport.com.

“We want to make sure that we democratise the sport with activities where everybody is invited to join, which is a combination of Formula 1 content mixed with music, art, culture.

“We continued with the movie Twisters and we have a couple of other movie partnerships coming, but we will also keep pushing on everything that’s music, because we believe it’s one of those universal languages that…