New synergies
Starting next season the collaboration between Red Bull and the AlphaTauri team (which will also change name starting from 2024) will be even narrower. The base of the team that was born in 2006 from the ashes of Minardi will remain in Faenza, but compared to the past the junior team’s interaction with the parent company in Milton Keynes will be much more accentuated. This has – predictably – given rise to fears within the paddock. The fear is that Red Bull, already a clearly dominant car in 2023, could benefit further from such a close collaboration with its satellite team.
Naturally there are very precise regulations that limit the passage of components between two different teams, but it is equally known to everyone how the teams – especially the richest and most powerful ones – often manage to act in gray areas of the regulation. The Austrians’ team principal responded directly to these rumors regarding an excessive exchange of information between Red Bull and what will be the ‘new’ AlphaTauri, Christian Horner. The English manager overturned the accusation, citing the famous and controversial precedent of 2020when the then RacingPoint – Mercedes customer team – created one almost identical car to the one deployed on the track by the ‘parent company’ the previous season.
The dig at Mercedes
“We are very far from what happened with the ‘pink Mercedes’ – commented Horner, as reported by the site Autosport.com – there are some transferable components that are clearly listed in the regulation that you are allowed to supply, and that’s what [in AlphaTauri] they got. If you look at our cars, there are fundamental differences between AlphaTauri and Red Bull Racing. And, probably, there are other cars on the grid that are much closer in concept to us than the AlphaTauri. Just look at an Aston Martin or a McLaren. If you look at the rear suspension of the McLaren the concept is very similar to that of ours“.
Horner then teased Toto Wolff and the Mercedes team again, underlining with a hint of malice how it could also happen that a client team does a better job than the ‘main’ team: “It all depends on the quality of the people who will be part of a team – added Horner – there are some components that we can supply, as is also the case for Mercedes and Ferrari who supply their respective customer teams with gearboxes, suspensions, simulators and wind tunnels. Then it depends on the teams how they use these tools. McLaren, for example, used them, in some respects, better than its supplier did for at least half the year“.
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