Red Bull Racing
| Based in: Milton Keynes, UK Founded: 2005 (active since 2005) Website: www.redbullracing.com Sporting director: Christian Horner (2005-...) Technical operations director: Günther Steiner (2006) Technical director: Mark Smith (2006), Geoff Willis (2007) Chief technical officer: Adrian Newey (2006-...) Chief designer: Rob Taylor (2006), Rob Marshall (2007-...) Chief aerodynamics: Ben Agathangelou (2005-2006), Petr Prodromou (2006-...) |  |
After several poor years for Jaguar in F1, Ford sold the team to Austrian drink company Red Bull. Ford had been cutting jobs all over the world and did not find it responsible to keep pumping money in a non performing F1 project.
Red Bull owner Mateschitz had all his reasons to buy a Formula One team. At first there have been many drivers sponsored by Red Bull who eventually aim to go to Formula One. The drink company could however not promise anything of that, but with the purchase of a team they are offering young drivers a path from the very beginning to the top of motorsport.
After some discussions between the former management of Jaguar (which had been retained), Mateschitz fired both Purnell and Pitchforth and assigned Arden International Formula 3000 team boss Christian Horner to run the F1 show. RBR started its first season with David Coulthard and a rotating second racing seat shared by Klien and Liuzzi, both Red Bull backed drivers. Shod on Michelin tires and powered by a Cosworth engine, the team put down a better result (by getting more points) in its maiden year than Jaguar was able to in all its years it had been in Formula One.
The second year proved a little troublesome as the Red Bull RB2 was not quite as good as the car from 2005. Although the Ferrari engines were powerful the car seemingly could not extract its full potential. The beginning of the season proved especially difficult as the car suffered cooling issues. As development fell behind, the team were always running after the facts in 2006.
2007 was destined to be a major improvement for the team, and in fact it was performance wise. The Adrian Newey designed RB3 suffered a serious lack of reliability despite the extremely reliable Renault engine. More specifically, the Red Bull RB3 was one of the least reliable cars of 2007 and managed to complete only 74% of the season's race distance.
Cars
| Car designation | Race years |
|---|---|
| Red Bull RB1 | 2005 |
| Red Bull RB2 | 2006 |
| Red Bull RB3 | 2007 |
| Red Bull RB4 | 2008 |
| Red Bull RB5 | 2009 |
