F1 | Racing Bulls aiming for the podium to be sold?

In today's world, things are changing faster and faster. Second after second, things change continuously, they do so with every blink of an eye: you risk closing your eyes for a moment and, upon reopening them, finding everything changed. Formula 1 is not a world outside this situation. Indeed, if possible it sublimates it. Every action, every move inside or outside a team triggers a domino effect that can literally upset, overturn plans that seemed already drawn up, established and assimilated.

This is the case of Racing Bulls, which during its first season in Formula 1, will be recognizable with the discussed and questionable name of Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team. The team which is still based in Faenza but has an increasingly strong connection with Milton Keynes – just think of the closure of the Bicester centre, where the wind tunnel used first by Toro Rosso, then by AlphaTauri was located – finds itself at a crossroads in which he could change his plans suddenly.

At the end of 2023 the objective of the Red Bull Group seemed to be clear: to revive the team after eighth place in the Constructors' World Championship by selling several components of the dominant RB19, without however exceeding the performance peaks. Moving up to the Constructors' World Championship in a few months, after having declared on several occasions that they had further strengthened the relationship with Red Bull, would have brought VCARB under the magnifying glass of their opponents. So sailing in mid-table at the end of the year would have been a result very close to the one hoped for and expected.

VCARB 01

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

As mentioned, however, things can change in an instant. Since the end of last season some rival teams, including McLaren through the words of its CEO Zak Brown, had questioned the legality and nature of this closer synergy between the two teams under the same owner.

The different amounts of hours that could be used in the wind tunnel were what made the alarm light go off. Red Bull, reigning world champion, is the team with the fewest. Racing Bulls, with seventh place obtained in 2023, instead has a much higher number and now, sharing the same tunnel for aerodynamic tests, rivals have had the not so subtle suspicion that Red Bull could use Racing Bulls as a guinea pig to test different solutions and continue to maintain a performance advantage that in 2023 was deserved, but embarrassing for the other teams.

So Brown has raised the issue on several occasions, stating that he wants to make sure to talk about it in the negotiations for the signing of the new Concordat Pact which will have to be implemented by 2026. And, in addition to this point, another has arisen even more important: will it be possible to continue to have two teams in the hands of the same owner from 2026?

“We are very concerned about the alliance between AlphaTauri and Red Bull,” the McLaren CEO said. “I think this is something that will have to be addressed in the future. So, I think our sport still has a long way to go to make sure everyone is truly independent.”

“These are two teams with common ownership, which is not the case in other sports. Red Bull could benefit from this in many different ways. There is a reason why they are moving a lot of staff from Italy.”

“As Helmut (Marko, Red Bull motorsport consultant) said, they will do everything they can to take advantage of having two teams. I understand that, because that's what the regulations say. But I think we need to look at the governance of the sport regarding technical alliances”.

Daniel Ricciardo, VCARB 01

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“It is important to uphold independence, competition and fairness, and I would like to see the regulations changed to ensure that in future influence is prevented from spreading from one team to another through strategic alliances and especially through ownership.” , Brown said. “Formula 1 should be true to its brand and each team, with the exception of the Power Units, should be totally independent of each other.”

In several sports, owners are not allowed to have more than one team per category. Just think of Serie A football. Aurelio De Laurentiis is the owner of SSC Napoli and SSC Bari. This is possible exclusively because the former plays in the major league, the A, while Bari in the lower league, the B. If one of the two were to reach the other in the same category , De Laurentiis would be forced to sell one to avoid a conflict of interest as regulated by current regulations. The same situation happened to Claudio Lotito, president of SS Lazio. When Salernitana rose to Serie A together with the Lazio team, he was forced to sell the Campania team.

Here, faced with the real danger of being forced to sell one of the two teams, the Red Bull Group may have decided to change strategy for Visa Cash App RB. From a concrete, but still under-the-radar improvement, he could move on to pushing hard to attempt an exploit (even podiums) from the first grand prix of the 2024 season to try to further enhance the asset and then put it on the market.

The strategy would be the following: show all the potential of the team to put it on display as a valuable piece of the showcase, and look for buyers before being forced to do so due to the possible decisions that will be imposed by the signing of the new Concorde Agreement.

Selling before 2026 would make sense from an economic point of view, while also doing yet another important operation from a commercial point of view. Doing it by will and not by compulsion could lead to obtaining a greater amount of money. If, however, the Red Bull Group were to wait for decisions on the future of the timeshare, then it could find itself forced to find a buyer in a short time and to accept other people's sales conditions, therefore, in all likelihood, at a lower price.

This is why the VCARB 01 is, at least on paper, a single-seater born with high-level ambitions. For now this is not enough, the engines are turned off and the machines are nearing completion. In fact, it means nothing. The track will give the first responses and for those we will have to wait for the Sakhir tests. What is certain, however, is that underneath the actually tight dress of the Italian-Austrian single-seater there is a lot of the RB19, the dominating single-seater of last season. If they are roses, as they say, they will bloom. But since there are bulls and not clubs in Faenza, it is more likely that they want to gore their opponents…