How Racing Bulls is emerging from Red Bull’s shadow

The difference through the Shanghai Turns 12-13 complex was palpable. Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls VCARB 02 purred as the throttle was squeezed on in Q1, submitting to the Japanese driver’s inputs to start galloping along the 0.72-mile back straight.

Liam Lawson’s Red Bull RB21, meanwhile, was considerably less welcoming – and the Kiwi found it particularly recalcitrant when it came to balancing the rear. No wonder he was almost a second slower than Tsunoda in that stage of qualifying. 

It was felt that Lawson might be a little bit too undercooked to handle the whims of the RB21. Prior to the Japanese Grand Prix, Red Bull’s convocation of chiefs deliberated in Dubai and elected to shuffle the New Zealander around with Tsunoda to bear the line-ups with which many believed it should have begun the year. 

Red Bull was at its unsentimental worst, but the easy-going VCARB 02 at least offers Lawson the security of a soft mattress to land upon. Although the Kiwi’s defiance in the face of overwhelming pressure painted the picture of someone rallying against the situation, getting kicked to the kerb after a bruising two races with the ‘main’ team will naturally knock a driver’s confidence.  

But there are worse places to be, particularly since the car he’s now got at his disposal had given Tsunoda a platform to prove his worth in Australia and China. Case in point: Isack Hadjar has already enjoyed his own impressive moments this year with a car that appears user-friendly for a rookie driver to pick up. That’s not to say that the diminutive Franco-Algerian hasn’t made mistakes, but it has at least offered a shop window for him to establish himself as a nifty qualifier. 

Although traditionally pegged as Red Bull’s junior team, there’s more to the rebranded Racing Bulls squad than has met the eye in 2025. The team has, over the past couple of seasons, quietly undergone something of a concerted growth spurt behind closed doors.  

Now under the management of team principal Laurent Mekies and CEO Peter Bayer, the two have formed a compelling duo as F1 team structures now lean towards installing a public-facing double-act at the top of the pyramid – think Andrea Stella and Zak Brown, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko or, in recent times, Oliver Oakes and Flavio Briatore.  

The team might have a frustrating penchant for changing its identity, but there’s something more tangible behind the latest wardrobe switch.  

Gasly and rookie Tsunoda netted the team’s best ever points tally of 142 in 2021

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Getty Images

The genesis of Racing Bulls in its current guise 

After nearly 15 years of happily coexisting as Scuderia Toro Rosso, serving as Red Bull’s subservient operation, there was an apparently sudden desire to build the Italian squad into its ‘sister team’. This coincided with a marked improvement in form over 2019, and in settling on more ‘senior’ drivers with Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat, both ex-Red Bull charges.

This was arguably due to something of a shortfall in its junior programme, and had clung to the drivers it had burned out in the ‘lead’ team, but the two combined well once Gasly and Alex Albon swapped places to help the team grab sixth in the constructors’ standings.

Red Bull wanted to bring its junior team to the next level and, under the technical guidance of Jody Egginton, aimed to trim some of the fat to ensure its bottom line looked a little more impressive.

The team has, over the past couple of seasons, quietly undergone something of a concerted growth spurt behind closed doors

After years of the squad diverging from its ‘parent’ team in producing its own parts, Egginton wanted to match the Ferrari-Haas ‘B-team’ model in taking on as many transferrable parts as possible within the bounds of the regulations.

The energy drink brand also had a new clothing line to promote, so the Toro Rosso name was deleted – for four years, the team was known as AlphaTauri. Its celestially themed moniker might have been a more feted name, had Sauber not already switched to the Alfa Romeo brand…

Those first two years as AlphaTauri heralded the team’s two best points-scoring seasons, reaching triple figures for the first time in 2020, and then its best-ever tally of 142 points in the following season largely thanks to Gasly, supported by a first-year Tsunoda. 

A decline followed, one that coincided with the introduction of the 2022-spec rules. But the alarm bells started to produce a cacophony at the start of 2023, when the AT04 it had produced appeared to be distinctly limited.

Erstwhile team principal Franz Tost, known for his calm-but-forthright approach to leadership, aimed both barrels at those responsible for the aero concept of the car. Once he’d shuffled the deck to nip its depreciation in the bud, the Austrian announced that he was hanging up his hat at the end of the year. 

Should Lawson have started the 2025 season at Racing Bulls, with Tsunoda at Red Bull?

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Mekies was subsequently peeled away from the Ferrari pitwall to lead the team, one for which he’d worked as a race engineer during its years as Minardi and Toro Rosso.

With Tost gone, the team decided to change the way it operated commercially; promoting Red Bull GmbH’s AlphaTauri brand was not deemed as much of a nice little earner as selling off the naming rights and opting for a generic constructor name. This was a path pursued by new CEO Bayer, who had joined from the FIA to bolster The Team Formerly Known As Minardi’s business case. 

RB was a nice convenient suffix to stick on the end of whatever sponsors to which the team had sold its branding, Visa and Cash App purchasing top billing. The company name was registered as Racing Bulls S.p.A. – although Bayer was keen to point out last year that its RB moniker was not an abbreviation for its rather generic company name. Turns out that it was, after all… 

Saying goodbye to Bicester 

One of the non-negotiable elements of Red Bull’s initial deal to buy Minardi was that the team should remain at its Faenza base. The team has stayed true to this but, to remain competitive in the recruitment arena, its Bicester base had grown in importance over the past few years to retain a UK presence.  

But it had outgrown those facilities. A handful of personnel were working out of Portakabins and, as Red Bull decided to break ground on a new wind tunnel next to its Milton Keynes base (in addition to its powertrain project), Racing Bulls elected to scour Rightmove to find somewhere closer to benefit from the enhanced internal ecosystem.

There was an opening at a facility conveniently located in ‘MK’ – not quite on the same premises as Red Bull’s campus, but just down the road. So Racing Bulls moved out of its venerable Bicester facilities at the start of this year, with the intention of increasing its appeal by offering potential new hires the chance to work at either Faenza or its new UK base. 

“We made a crucial decision – not to localise departments in just one of the two sites, whether it’s aero, design or production,” Mekies told Motorsport.com’s Roberto Chinchero of the team’s move.

“Instead, we chose a model where each of these departments has staff both in Faenza and Milton Keynes. We have this opportunity, so to maximise it, we expanded it to all departments. This way, we can offer employees the choice to work in Italy or the UK, which is also useful in retaining staff when life choices come into play.”

Adherence to the pre-race plan and not adapting its strategy in China was unhelpful

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

For now, the team is still at the behest of Red Bull’s ageing wind tunnel in Bedford, but the new facilities are very much in progress and touted for a 2026 grand opening. There have been further technical changes afoot, with Egginton ‘moved upstairs’ into a role with Red Bull Advanced Technologies. Ex-McLaren man Tim Goss will assimilate some of the Midlander’s duties into his existing chief technical officer role. 

VCARBs easy to digest 

It’s fair to suggest that Racing Bulls is in contention for fifth in this year’s constructors’ championship. It has competition from a renewed Williams for that honour, perhaps even Aston Martin on a good day, but on pure pace the alabaster machines have filled the void between F1’s ‘Big Four’ and the midfield runners and riders.

Crucially, that pace appears to be repeatable, too; the VCARB 02 seems to be defined by excellent compliance and a relatively neutral handling range, just bordering on a smidgen of understeer.

Despite its common parts with Red Bull, Racing Bulls’ technical team has managed to entice them to work in a completely different manner. The rear is predictable and settled, and the front end lets itself be led by the drivers’ inputs rather than – as with the Red Bull – amping up the sensitivity at the wheel.

"Is it only an advantage to receive pre-made gearboxes and suspension? Not entirely. We can see that in other customer teams, which have sometimes opted to buy parts but later abandoned the approach. There are pros and cons" Laurent Mekies

In longer corners, these traits allow the drivers to cling on and balance the rear on the throttle. In shorter turns, the car gives the drivers latitude to play with their corner entries – perhaps at the expense of needing to work the wheel a little more to get the turn-in at the apex. 

At the start of the year, Mekies stated that the team “wanted to have a car that has a bit more consistency compared to last year. We had very good moments but, after we had more difficult races, in terms of overall target we have tried to understand what made our car not so consistent last year and address some of that.”

Last year’s pull-rod switch, bringing it in line with the suspension components used by Red Bull, required time to scope out, although the team was nonetheless in the hunt for sixth in the constructors’ championship. With a season’s worth of experience, it seems that the team has got its head around the associated changes in kinematics and put together a benign-handling car.  

“Is it only an advantage to receive pre-made gearboxes and suspension?” Mekies explained. “Not entirely. We can see that in other customer teams, which have sometimes opted to buy parts but later abandoned the approach. There are pros and cons. 

Team principal Mekies, with Hadjar, was once a Minardi/Toro Rosso race engineer

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“The advantages are clear – we don’t need to add more personnel to our 650-strong workforce, nor do we need to invest in R&D for gearboxes and suspensions. Another benefit is receiving parts from a top team, knowing they are made to the highest standards. 

“The downside is that you don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind certain design choices, which can be a challenge when we are fighting for every tenth of a second.” 

Iffy strategy calls reduce early-season pay-off 

A healthy haul of points went begging in both Australia and China. The delayed call to switch to intermediate tyres cost Tsunoda – running in fifth place before the mid-race downpour turned the GP on its head – a hefty pay-day, culminating in his off-track excursion at Turn 12 as the final sector of the Albert Park circuit was worst affected by the precipitation. 

China might have been a more egregious scenario. Both Tsunoda and Hadjar were running in the top 10 before the strategists decided to stick to the pre-race prediction of a two-stopper, rather than respond to the lower-than-expected wear of the hard tyre and eke out the stint.

The two had pitted no earlier than the other points-scoring runners, but perhaps the team had banked on overtaking being easier than it proved to be in the dying stages at Shanghai. 

Racing Bulls’ proclivity to going all-in with its strategies has been detrimental so far. At least it knows that, with Hadjar showing good early pace this year, it can potentially split strategy calls in 50-50 situations. In races where strategies are arguably more linear, the team should be able to capitalise. 

The off-track evolution that Racing Bulls has undergone over the past two years now appears to be bearing fruit, and it’s up to Goss and co to keep the forward momentum as the championship moves into its next ruleset in 2026.  In the short term, there’s the small matter of a fifth-place finish in the constructors’ championship available.

Sure, Racing Bulls has the car and now the infrastructure to achieve an all-time high WCC finish, but the tightness of the midfield battle will ensure it has a steep hill to climb to get there.

This article is one of many in the new monthly issue of Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the May 2025 issue and subscribe today.

VCARB 02 a more consistent and benign-handling package than ‘big brother’ RB21

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool