Red Bull deserves more respect for changing F1

Smile on his face, red cape (and nothing more) on his torso, Christian Horner leaps into the swimming pool of the Red Bull Energy Station.

It's May 2006, and Horner is not making quite the same jump as around 15 months previously, when he was placed in charge of Red Bull's new, wholly owned Formula 1 squad and named the youngest team principal in the championship's history.

But it's significant nonetheless: Red Bull, the party team, the young disruptor, has just scored its first podium finish on its 26th attempt.

Horner's leadership by example triggers post-race celebrations that descend into a massive shoving contest as team members rush to throw one another in the water as well.

"I can't see Zak Brown doing that now," grins Horner as he reflects with Autosport on that moment more than a decade later. "Or Ron Dennis, or even Flavio Briatore. It was just... different."

Red Bull was ever thus. Especially in F1. Especially in the early days. F1's general split between teams being entered by car manufacturers or racing companies helps highlight the extent to which Red Bull is an anomaly. Benetton is the only other team that has come close, in terms of a major sponsor taking charge and running the team under its own name to so much success.

For a long time Benetton's story was unique. Yet Red Bull's F1 story can be unfairly characterised as a massive company deciding to get more involved, spending a lot of money, and winning - then complaining when it stopped winning. That glosses over the investment and effort that has gone into making it happen.

"Red Bull has always been non-conformist," says Horner, still presiding over the race team and (as in 2006) back to creating a foundation to fight for titles. "I think back to the energy that Red Bull brought into the paddock when we first turned up in 2005, at Imola for our first European race, with the Energy Station. The music was playing loud and there's a real vibe. Everyone thought, 'What on Earth is this?'

"This quickly got confused with us being portrayed as the party team. What it really was, and it quickly became clear as we recruited key personnel and became more competitive, is there is no reason you can't have fun along the way, no reason to not be burdened with corporate blandness."

What started with letting David Coulthard grow a beard - "that never happened at McLaren!" - has grown into much bigger exhibitions: driving a car through the streets of London, performing donuts on the helipad of a roof in Dubai, sliding down the snow-covered slopes of Austrian Alpine town of Kitzbuhel.

On-track, Red Bull backs 20% of the current grid, and helped keep Honda - an important manufacturer - in F1 after the Japanese engine maker's split from McLaren. Red Bull is responsible for the return of the Austrian Grand Prix, one of the season's most successful races (this year's being no exception). And the driver programme it has funded at immense cost produced one of the most successful racers in history in Sebastian Vettel and is giving modern fans Max Verstappen.

The raft of drivers Red Bull has brought into F1 have added ability, race wins and personality in spades. These drivers have been encouraged to speak their mind, enjoy what Red Bull has to offer, and not feel restrained by the ever-increasing corporate world of F1. It is similar to how the company sees itself. As Red Bull motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko puts it: "We leave the personalities of the driver, we don't train them how to speak. As long as they can eat with a knife and a fork, it's fine!"

Red Bull's influence also stretches wider than most. While its headline involvement has unsurprisingly been the two F1 teams it bought and rebranded (and the short-lived NASCAR effort), it has also committed to other major sponsorship deals with teams and individual drivers.

Red Bull has managed what Jaguar - a manufacturer steeped in motorsport history - utterly failed to achieve across five disappointing and expensive F1 seasons

It has been affiliated to various successes, including MotoGP, the World Rally Championship, DTM, World Touring Cars, Australian Supercars and the Dakar. When assessing what it has done for F1, and the wider motorsport world, in the last decade and a half, Red Bull probably does not get the credit it deserves.

Boosting the present, creating history

Right now, Red Bull is beating Ferrari on race pace and, with new engine partner Honda, laying the foundations for what it hopes will be a season-long fight against Mercedes in 2020. Quit threats never seem too far away, but that ghost will never be laid to rest all the while Red Bull's involvement rests on the whim of one person.

Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz should have F1 by the cojones, with all he has given it. Which is some journey from being as much of a dreamer as anybody who fancies owning an F1 team.

"What struck me immediately when meeting Dietrich was his passion and enthusiasm for motorsport, and ambition and vision," remembers Horner, who is now 45. "Even at that stage it was clear that he didn't want to just take part.

"He was very keen to do things a bit differently, to take all of Red Bull's values into a Formula 1 team. Having been a shareholder at Sauber and a sponsor previously, this for the first time was going to be Red Bull's own team in Formula 1.

"Even in those early days, what attracted me to the project more than anything was his enthusiasm, his commitment, his infectious motivation and belief."

Since taking over Jaguar and entering F1 in 2005 - and finishing fourth on its debut with Coulthard - Red Bull has established itself as not only one of the most important players in F1 for more than a decade, it has swiftly written itself into the annals of history.

Red Bull's 'main' team had to wait until early 2009 for its first victory. That win, in the Chinese Grand Prix, before it had even adopted the controversial double-diffuser that shook up the competitive order as part of a raft of rule changes, was the first of 60 (and counting). The tally puts Red Bull sixth in the all-time wins list, behind only Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, Mercedes and Lotus. It is the same story in terms of world championships, pole positions and podiums.

Even in races started - a key barometer of a team's history in the world championship, albeit one skewed slightly by the rise in number of races a season these days - Red Bull stands impressively. Well over a hundred teams have started a world championship grand prix, and Red Bull sits just outside the top 10 in this list on 275 starts.

Another way to put it is that it managed what Jaguar - a manufacturer steeped in motorsport history - utterly failed to achieve across five disappointing and expensive seasons. Which is impressive considering what Red Bull inherited when it took over: "Basically it was a mess."

Fixing the Jaguar situation, coaxing Adrian Newey away from McLaren and giving him the infrastructure he needed to make Red Bull a winner in F1 took many years. Nobody could have predicted the massive step that would be made in 2009, when Red Bull established itself as Brawn's biggest challenger - let alone the final jump to being a world championship-winning team in '10.

"As a team we were still obviously a bit unpolished in areas," says Horner. "Operationally there is a lot of difference between running midfield and running at the front of the grid. Everything shows up under the spotlight.

"We probably weren't ready to win a world championship in 2009, but by the time '10 came along we were very much ready. It was a question of evolution, being self-analytical, self-critical, again just putting the right processes and procedures into place.

"We were up against massive competitors, McLaren at the time, Ferrari, big teams. It just meant we had to raise our game in all areas."

Why quit threats aren't hot air

Red Bull has experienced all F1 can throw at a team in the past decade. From its first victory in 2009 to a first world title in '10, which snowballed into four consecutive championship doubles, it raised the bar for what giants of F1 - mainly Ferrari and McLaren - needed to aim for.

During this time, Vettel set a new record for consecutive victories in the second half of 2013. Unlike Ferrari, or McLaren, or Williams - all of whom had had seasons of almost unrelenting success - there appeared to be greater discontent when Red Bull was at its most successful.

"The biggest compliment you can have from your rivals is getting under their skin because it means you're doing something right" Christian Horner

Red Bull's popularity went hand-in-glove with Vettel's. Neither seemed to get the adulation they deserved, with Vettel's reputation in particular seeming to suffer alongside Mark Webber, as he was either criticised for getting preferential treatment over a number-two driver, or only beating a number-two driver.

Their partnership made for "uncomfortable" moments for Red Bull, particularly when it went from having a 1-2 finish in the 2010 Monaco Grand Prix to both drivers crashing into each other in Turkey. "We had gone from that absolute highest point you can to the lowest within a two-week period," remembers Horner.

Apart from its driver rivalry, Red Bull came under ever-increasing scrutiny from its opposition as it shook up the competitive order and irritated teams with a bold recruitment drive, including hiring Newey.

"The best way to become unpopular is to do a lot of winning," says Horner. "We started to win a lot and obviously with our rivals it started to stick in the throat a bit.

"The biggest compliment you can have from your rivals is getting under their skin because it means you're doing something right. I think that we were ploughing our own furrow and we were winning, we were competitive, and we were doing it in our own way."

When the rules changed in 2014 and engine partner Renault slipped well behind, the relationship deteriorated rapidly in public view. From dominating the season before to sniping three victories when Mercedes was off its game, Red Bull and Renault had a rapid fall from grace.

Red Bull has not been in title contention since. Finally, in 2018, the decision was made to cut ties with Renault and form a new alliance for this season with Honda. Before that, tensions escalated to the point that Red Bull issued a very serious quit threat. It wanted to split from Renault in 2015 but found avenues to Mercedes or Ferrari power blocked.

Some felt that Red Bull wanted to eat its cake, and have it too. Any subsequent suggestions it could leave F1 have been haughtily dismissed by critics. But any individual making a serious investment is free to question that investment if they feel it is being damaged.

"For Red Bull it's very important we have the ability to compete to win," says Horner of the Honda deal's importance to the team's F1 future. "A vital element of that is the power unit.

"With Honda we have an apolitical partner that's not in anybody's pocket. It has a great track record in F1 and is keen to get back into a consistent winners' circle. That's exactly where we are as a team."

Mateschitz and his company do not need to spend this much money in grand prix racing. That does not mean F1 should hand him his desires on a silver platter. But it does mean his decision to withdraw if he does not feel it is worth his investment is his alone.

Red Bull was not built on following the status quo

Red Bull's expectation of what it wanted from F1 changed when it bought Jaguar and then Minardi to form Toro Rosso, its junior team. And unsurprisingly, as the stakes got higher, the 'to hell with everyone else' attitude got harder to stick with. Red Bull has continued to go off-piste, but even the most renegade organisation cannot escape the realities of F1.

"The politics that surround the sport always have done whenever there's a lot of money involved," says Horner. "I think we've always tried to operate by sticking to the base principles that we are a race team, we focus on being a race team, and our biggest asset is our people. We're not afraid to voice an opinion or speak our mind in what we believe in."

An unappreciated maverick

F1's four current engine manufacturers - Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda and Renault - have long F1 narratives as works teams and engine partners, with various entry and exit points along the way. On the teams' side, names such as McLaren and Williams are tethered to the history of F1.

This is something Red Bull simply cannot compete with. However, asking what Red Bull's legacy will be - looking forward instead of judging its relative lack of history that should not be held against it - puts the organisation in stronger stead.

Four straight world titles from 2010 to '13 should mark out that period specifically as one of the most impressive in F1 history. That alone is a formidable sporting achievement, representing a peak as high as any of the most famous in F1 history. It was only the third time that feat had been accomplished, after McLaren (1988-1991) and Ferrari (2000-2004). Mercedes joined the list in '17. That is the company Red Bull keeps in terms of pedigree.

History only counts for so much: just ask teams that have slipped competitively (McLaren and Williams) or faded from F1's existence (Lotus and Brabham). Yet it is still a strong emotive influence. Without long-standing F1 history, to some people Red Bull remains an outcast in the pantheon of F1 giants.

F1 would be poorer without Red Bull's involvement, although perhaps Fernando Alonso's career would have the added gloss of a couple of extra world titles. The Red Bull story is about more than paying money to win in F1 and selling expensive fizzy drinks. It has left an undeniably strong impact in a short space of time.

"Red Bull made F1 more attractive," says Marko. "Our Energy Station, our show runs, the way we act. We're more informal compared to others. It has brought a real, fresh, positive atmosphere in F1."

Red Bull's existence outside of the motor racing world means it's not as intrinsically tied to F1 in the same way as Ferrari is. When Ferrari threatens to quit, you can always question how much the company will lose - and justifiably doubt whether it will go through with it. If Mateschitz pulled the plug, who would lose more: the world's most marketed energy drink company, or the championship that relies on it for four cars, a grand prix, countless publicity stunts and a top-class driver conveyor belt?

Glorified sponsors such as Marlboro are remembered more fondly for less than Red Bull has given F1. Maybe others knew their places, limiting their involvement to funding drives and taking control of car liveries. But Red Bull was not built on following the status quo.

"We've not been afraid to take risks," says Horner. "And we've been in no one's pocket. Red Bull isn't beholden to a manufacturer. It's its own brand, its own entity and we take our own path in Formula 1."

The glory years of 2010 to 2013 are a little way behind now, but Red Bull is the only team to have defeated Mercedes this year. What used to be McLaren's job - the independent fighting against the works teams - is now firmly entrusted in Horner's operation.

Red Bull may never have the gravitas of the teams that have competed since the early decades of F1, but it's a key modern-day player worthy of more respect, and maybe a bit more affection, than it tends to receive.