Red Bull second team axe considerations revealed after call for F1 model to be banned

After the controversy of Singapore, VCARB CEO Peter Bayer revealed Red Bull did briefly consider selling the junior team but decided there were “a lot of positives” in having two teams.

One of those positives was evident at the Singapore Grand Prix when VCARB driver Daniel Ricciardo made a late pit stop to snatch the fastest lap away from Max Verstappen’s title rival, Lando Norris.

Red Bull and VCARB courted controversy with Singapore fastest lap steal

Although Ricciardo had nothing to gain except a 17th fastest lap for the Aussie in the F1 history books, Red Bull had a lot to gain as that one point has swung the F1 2024 title race in Verstappen’s favour.

Even if Lando Norris wins every one of the last six races, takes the fastest lap points, and wins the Sprints, Verstappen only has to finish runner-up to claim the title by that single point.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner insisted there was “nothing more to it than” Ricciardo going for the fastest lap while VCARB team boss Laurent Mekies said he just wanted to “finish this weekend on a high”.

But given that it benefitted VCARB’s senior team’s title contender, Verstappen, it was considered a controversial call. One that had former Haas team boss Guenther Steiner declaring one organisation owning two teams is an “issue” .

“No owner should have two teams,” he told the Red Flag podcast. “You never get away from the suspicion that there is team orders between teams, not in one team, between teams… For the future, maybe there needs to be a fix to this one that nobody can own two teams.”

Red Bull almost implemented that fix themselves last year before rebranding AlphaTauri as VCARB.

“[Red Bull] set a strategy,” Bayer told Motorsport Week. “because I think it was no secret that they were discussing at least whether we should keep both teams actually, or should we just focus on one team, and then run our F1 operations through Red Bull Racing.

“But very quickly they came to a conclusion that ‘no, we want to keep both teams,’ there are a lot of positives.”

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Red Bull looking at ‘best’ way possible to ‘use a second team’

Although there were rumours last year that Red Bull could sell their junior team, motorsport advisor Helmut Marko announced in March that Red Bull’s stakeholders had made the call to keep the team and rebrand it, adding that they would “use as many synergies with Red Bull Racing as are allowed by the regulations”.

VCARB team boss Mekies confirmed this as he revealed Red Bull are “looking at the best possible way to use a second [F1] team.

“They felt that they needed a new start in terms of how the team was positioned, both from pure identity perspectives and also from a competitiveness point of view.

“What they told us is that ‘we have a lot of great ideas on what we want to do about this second team, but the first thing is P8, P9, P10 doesn’t work,’ because whatever our message is, if we are at the back of the grid we are going to struggle to get that message to complement anything that we are not already doing with the team [Red Bull] winning every race.

“The second thing they told us is, ‘there are very, very clear regulations, can we please have a look at it and think about the two teams as being owned by one entity, you are competing one against the other, but at least where regulations allow, can we have a look at if it makes sense to do everything that the regulations are allowing us to do’, which was not always the case before.”

But it is not only synergy in the regulations at play, VCARB is also again expected to be Red Bull’s training ground for young drivers with Liam Lawson hotly tipped to follow up his six-race 2024 audition with a 2025 race seat alongside Yuki Tsunoda.

Should the team even make the call – as some pundits are predicting – to put him in the Red Bull alongside Verstappen next season instead of Sergio Perez, Red Bull’s Formula 2 star Isack Hadjar is expected to take the second VCARB seat.

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