Worst name ever for an F1 team? Certainly “Visa Cash App RB F1″ with which AlphaTauri was renamed, now derided by half the world and insulted on social media as the very symbol of F1's commercial drift. The first to argue was former world champion Jenson Button who made unflattering statements to the Associated Press directly from the Daytona race: “Visa Cash app… what comes next? RB. What? I don't know what I'll call it this year, we'll see what we'll be asked to call the team…”. Button is a Sky commentator and jokes about it. But then he gets serious: “People talk about it, right? So that's fine. It was a gimmick that worked. However…”.
It may work, but no one likes it: “Visa Cash App RB is the worst team name in the history of Formula 1 and an embarrassment to Red Bull and Formula 1 as a whole,” wrote Edd Straw of The Race. “Not only does it seem phony, it also shows a tremendous lack of imagination that can only weaken the spirit of those who work for the team. More than that, it's a message to the hundreds of millions of viewers that this team is not a competitor to be taken seriously.”
“It is difficult to imagine founder Dietrich Mateschitz – continues Straw – allowing this to happen if he were still alive, which in itself is significant given that Red Bull was built on his astonishing capacity for marketing strategies”.
But Straw was gracious to many fans who took to social media to ridicule the name. One asked: “What's the next step? Will Max Verstappen compete like Max EA Verstappen and Sergio Perez like Sergio Telmex Perez?”. And to think that when Red Bull launched the team as “Scuderia Toro Rosso” – the Italian translation of Red Bull – everything seemed to be going well. A satellite team that from its debut in 2006 until 2019 held the Italian technological flag high given that it is the Italian racing team based in Faenza, heir to Minardi. And a name that was a tribute to Made in Italy. Then the decline. And it's not over.
“I think you're going to see more sponsored name teams emerge in the future,” says Tom Legeman, a professor of motorsports marketing and management at Northwest Ohio University. “Look at what happened with the stadiums. Sponsor names only. Something unheard of 25 years ago, but normal today. Of course, purists will hate the change. None of the old F1 fans want Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Williams and other iconic F1 brands co-branded with a consumer product or service, but the path is marked.”
Hence the arrival of Visa Cash App. And the strategy, incomprehensible to many, is explained by Clay Hershaw, associate professor of Motorsports Management at Winston-Salem State University: “Behind this name lies the project of the global Visa brand which through F1 is attempting to help Cash App increase its current presence beyond the US and UK.” Will it work? We will see. There is certainly talk about it, but it must be considered that – at least for now – it is only talked about to insult the team. And to ridicule the team that perhaps didn't deserve all this. A team that – in any case – will always remain Toro Rosso for us. That of the Ferrari engine, that of Vettel's victory at Monza in 2008.
#Toro #Rosso #FormulaPassion.it
