How Red Bull's dynamic leader shaped its F1 philosophy

For about two seconds I hold Dietrich Mateschitz’s wallet in my hands. It has fallen out of his motorcycle helmet, which I’ve moved from a leather armchair in order to be able to sit more comfortably opposite ‘Mr Red Bull’. I resist the temptation to pop the clip and look inside.

It’s slim, black, light and confers upon the holder an immense feeling of power. With this wallet, and access to the resources it represents, Formula 1 teams, football franchises, stunt planes, rocket-men, sky-divers, base-jumpers, white-water rafters, kite-surfers, snowboarders, downhill skiers… can be bought.

Creations such as the Hangar-7 aircraft museum/art gallery/luxury restaurant in which we’re sitting, can be plucked from the ether of imagination and given form, made real, in a symphony of metal and glass. Futures can be moulded; different ways of being, envisioned; lifestyles drawn up from a fantastical wish-list to be perfected into a near-Utopian ideal. And the name ‘Red Bull’ can be writ ever larger across the globe.

The achievement of these goals is why the company is involved in F1, of course. From its early forays 12 years ago as sponsor of, then shareholder in, the Sauber team, to its acquisition at the end of 2004 of the ailing Jaguar Racing, Red Bull – Mateschitz – has always understood the appeal of the global sexed-up soap opera-on-wheels to a mass audience.

More crucially, it also ‘got’ how the key qualities of the Red Bull brand shrink-wrap perfectly around those of F1 (a ‘global extreme sport’, as Mateschitz’s one-time right-hand man Dany Bahar put it): speed, quality, youth, glamour, danger, sex, money. Something a little bit different; not an everyman’s pursuit, understood by all, but one revered with obsessive passion by those who do.

It’s a vision dedicated to, and predicated on, the cult of the can. One can – but billions of its kind sold globally each year. One drink within that can: the sweet, charged, ‘life elixir’ that devotees believe enhances everything from their sex life to their Saturday night out. One proposition: Red Bull Gives You Wings.

Without The Can and its associated values, there is nothing. No F1 teams. No Hangar-7. No Dietrich Mateschitz – at least not in the form he has become known: an internationally recognised, though still mysterious figure, responsible for probably the single most successful, most sustained sports-marketing campaign the world has ever seen.

Daniel Ricciardo is interviewed at Hangar 7 in Salzburg, where Mateschitz's many passions were combined

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

It promotes an almost-fantasy world populated by impossibly glamorous people; speed-addicted, fast-living, monied… Sound familiar? The wonder isn’t that Red Bull got into bed with F1; only that consummation wasn’t quicker.

Mateschitz rarely talks in public about his beloved company, nor the marketing philosophies that brought it to F1 and which underpin its broader success. But when he does grant an interview, the ‘international man of mystery’ image (perhaps cultivated, perhaps because he’s a little shy) falls away fast. He’s far more approachable than any multi-billionaire need be and is warm, friendly, direct. No austere corporate terminator, he is possessed, instead, of a curiously gentle manner – soft-spoken, even bashful.

It’s an unexpected combination in a 62-year-old who has achieved phenomenal business success (net wealth $7bn – which makes him roughly twice as rich as Bernie Ecclestone), and it instantly puts those around him at ease: no bone-crushing, master-of-the-universe handshake so often the preserve of the alpha-plus male; no stentorian boom trumpeting an ego-driven masterplan. Mateschitz could be your big-framed matey uncle; equally at ease in the rough-and-tumble of a back yard kick-around as he is plotting the global domination of his business empire.

"When we started with Red Bull Racing, a lot of people said it was just a marketing exercise and that we wouldn’t be professional about our racing or weren’t serious enough. I believe that they have changed their mind" Dietrich Mateschitz

Dressed in an easy, Euro-casual style (jeans, primrose-yellow polo shirt, slip-on loafers, sock-free ankles) he is not an intimidating man, despite physical heft and a charismatic presence. Staff talk to him, unbowed. He engages in small talk. He is, above all, disarming, un-prickly.

His weathered-well-tended features crease into a smile as he talks about his life’s work and concedes Red Bull and F1 were surely destined for liaison. “I would say it’s a pretty perfect fit between them, yes.” The voice is deep and accented, but fluent and articulate. This is a man who knows his own mind: “Motorsport generally fits with what we’re trying to do with Red Bull, which is why you see us in NASCAR, MotoGP, WRC and many other branches of motorsport. But F1, sure, is the pinnacle of that.”

He’s remarkably frank, too, about the rationale that underpins Red Bull’s F1 involvement. Grand Prix racing is, he admits, a brilliant marketing tool and as a career marketeer, Mateschitz couldn’t resist its allure.

“Right from the start we could see that Formula 1 was a good marketing platform,” he says, “one of the very best, in fact. It had the best image and whatever sort of analysis we did – qualitative, quantitative, any type – whenever we assessed it, we could see what it might be able to offer.”

Mateschitz bought the Jaguar team in 2004 and renamed it as Red Bull for 2005

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The research gave rise to plans, in the early noughties, to buy the Arrows team and turn it into a Red Bull-USA entry, at a stroke giving long-desired penetration into the US market and granting Mateschitz the full control he wanted of any Formula 1 assault undertaken in Red Bull silver-and-blue. That plan came to nothing, but it wasn’t long before a more suitable potential acquisition came along: Ford-owned Jaguar Racing. A little over 18 months later, Minardi boss Paul Stoddart was also wooed by Mateschitz’s charms (and chequebook) and sold his minnow team into a brighter future, as Scuderia Toro Rosso.

For a time, in 2005, Red Bull owned 20 per cent of the Formula 1 grid: not bad for a venture regarded by much of the older guard as arriviste and brash. But those who knew anything of the company and its methods wouldn’t have been surprised.

The playbook was written after Mateschitz’s epiphany, more than 20 years ago, that a ubiquitous soft drink being sold in Thailand called Krating Daeng (Red Water Buffalo) could, with a little tweaking for European palates, sell and sell and sell. With Red Bull F1, as with the marketing of the original drink, the strategy was identical: identify product; move fast; push product as hard as you can. If that meant, in the F1 example, buying a couple of teams to enhance the chances of shifting cans to a youthful, trend-savvy audience, then simply: “Let’s do it.”

The ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ business model offends those purists who argue that only teams forged through a decades-long apprenticeship have any business in F1. Red Bull counters that without its buy-in Jaguar, Minardi and perhaps 1,000 uniquely skilled staff would no longer be in Formula 1.

“When we started with Red Bull Racing,” Mateschitz reflects, “a lot of people said it was just a marketing exercise and that we wouldn’t be professional about our racing or weren’t serious enough. I believe that they have changed their mind. What we did in the first two years, on track and off the track, means you cannot say any more that we are just a marketing team.”

There’s passion in Mateschitz’s words. Something of the molten core that must bubble away constantly to drive Red Bull’s ever-stronger ambition seeps through in his vigorous hand gestures and animated expressions. It colours his tone of voice when he articulates a vision for success.

“We have invested in Red Bull Racing’s windtunnel, to make it state-of-the art,” he says. “We have invested in the facilities; we have almost doubled the number of employees and we have gone out to get the best of what is available, whether that is Adrian Newey to design the car or Ferrari and Renault engines to power it. Everybody realises that it’s more than just marketing to do this and now we want to be in a position to be taking podiums and competing on merit.”

Mateschitz was determined to invest to turn Red Bull from midfield fodder - pictured is Christian Klien on course for eighth in the 2006 Bahrain GP - into title contenders

Photo by: Motorsport Images

What Red Bull won’t deny is that its approach could scarcely be more different from the original intentions of, say, Ferrari. For Old Man Enzo, racing was the reason for existing. Ferrari was racing was Ferrari. Sure, he’d craft a few beautiful, desirable road cars to help fund the racing programme, but racing, pure and simple, was always Ferrari’s sine qua non.

But love or loathe the self-sketched Red Bull Universe, Mateschitz is no dilettante: this clear-thinking, hard-headed business icon achieved considerable career success in his pre-Red Bull life, rising to become international marketing manager for the Blendax cosmetics company. And he hasn’t committed $300m per season to Red Bull Racing, simply to earn a paddock pass.

“We have to win,” he says, before pausing and marginally down-scaling his aspirations, possibly mindful of the challenge involved in beating such crack racing legions as Ferrari, Renault and McLaren-Mercedes. “At the very least we have to compete at the front. When you are an energy drink and it’s an energy drink that ‘gives you wings’, you have to be competing with winners.

"If you really look at Red Bull’s philosophy, there’s hard work, challenge, performance, but at the same time, leisure, a little bit of party and some social things" Dietrich Mateschitz

“Actually you maybe don’t have to win, as long as you lose in the right way. There are some ‘losers’ who are the race heroes and it is an essential part of sport to lose as well as win. But if we lose for too long, then people will ask questions. They will be shouting from the back of the grandstands: ‘Get us another energy drink!’”

Mateschitz laughs with an expression that’s humour laced with 10 per cent fear, 10 per cent horror at the notion of “another energy drink” usurping his own. “Our expectations,” he emphasises, “are extremely high.”

And above all else, they must be met on Red Bull’s own terms – achieved through adherence to the company’s particular values – in order to sustain the cult of the can. It’s here, you sense, that the essence of Red Bull’s adventure lies. It wants to be known for what it is: fast, loud, brash, maybe, but never, ever, invisible or anonymous. In the F1 world, how could it be, with two teams, the mighty team/party-central twin-motorhome Energy Station; the Formula Una models who attend every race; the Red Bulletin paddock newspaper?

Mateschitz resists suggestions that in putting a smile back on F1’s face, Red Bull has provided the antidote to creeping public apathy towards the sport. If Red Bull has done anything, he argues, it has brought back some of the ’70s values that made F1 a little less corporate, a little less PC, and a lot more focused on its superstars.

Mateschitz was always clear that the drivers should be the stars of the show

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“Formula 1 isn’t BMW or Mercedes or Toyota,” he says. “It’s Nico Rosberg or Robert Kubica or Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and their friends and what goes on around them. This is what Formula 1 is about: sport, fuel, noise and a social scene. Some of this has been forgotten, so maybe we have been able to remind it a little bit of what it should be and used to be.”

Red Bull’s world view has been unavoidable in F1 from the off – and that’s precisely the point.

“If you really look at Red Bull’s philosophy,” Mateschitz reflects, “there’s hard work, challenge, performance, but at the same time, leisure, a little bit of party and some social things. Really, most people share our philosophy. Some will never share it and maybe it’s good like that. We don’t need to appeal to everybody. It would be wrong even to try. You cannot be everybody’s darling and even if you try, you will fail.

“The important thing is to be authentic and be like you are. The people who like you as you are will be your friends, and the people who don’t… well, that’s their problem. We hope, at least, that the people who don’t like us in F1 will still come and have a drink in our Energy Station.”

A can of Red Bull, presumably.

Mateschitz celebrates Red Bull's first title with team boss Christian Horner and Adrian Newey at Abu Dhabi in 2010

Photo by: Motorsport Images