Worrying news about one of the modest teams on the grid.
The AlphaTauri team, formerly known as Toro Rosso, could be in danger. The subsidiary of the Red Bull team is costing the company too much money, and the new head of Red Bull F1 after the death of Dietrich Mateschitz, seems not to be willing to have an extra million-dollar expense, as he supposes to have a second structure Independent in F1.
Oliver Mintzlaff is the person who will direct the future of Red Bull in Formula 1 from now on, after having been in charge of the management of the RB Leipzig team in the past and of the brand’s activities in the football sector, where the company sponsors and owns various teams.
The German executive has been present in Bahrain during the F1 Tests, and has not taken long to transcend his position on his second team, AlphaTauri. This, by competing in the middle of the table (it was ninth in 2022), reports much less benefits than the champion Red Bull – specifically, 100 million euros less -, and that is too expensive.
As if that were not enough, it must be remembered that the role with which Toro Rosso was born in the past was to have an academy for drivers who, in the future, could make the leap to Red Bull. Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen were, among others, members of the Red Bull Junior Team. However, for years, both teams have been forced to sign outside, as they have done with Pérez or De Vries.
Moving to the UK or selling the equipment
Apparently, the visibility that AlphaTauri – the fashion brand of the Red Bull empire – obtains is not enough to maintain the Formula 1 team, with hundreds of millions of euros in salaries, a factory in Faenza (Italy), money destined for the development of the car… Now, according to the information published by Auto Motor und Sport, two alternatives are put on the table.
One allows the survival of the team and the other involves the sale to another company interested in entering Formula 1. The option that would be least damaging to AlphaTauri would force the structure to leave Italy – where it has been since its time as Minardi – to move to UK. There it would work more closely with Red Bull and costs would be cut.
‘Option B’, which, on the other hand, seems to be the simplest and also the most likely, is the sale of the team to one of the multiple structures that want to enter the premier class. The FIA, as confirmed by President Ben Sulayem, is open to exploring the interest of new teams, so it seems feasible.
Auto Motor und Sport cites several interested parties, including Andretti-Cadillac, which already revealed its desire to enter the Grand Circus at the beginning of the year. There is also talk of the HitechGP structure, which has competed in Formula 3 and Formula 2 in recent years, and of the Mumbai Falcons, an Indian team that runs in the Middle East Regional Formula and Asian F3.
Apparently, AlphaTauri and Red Bull have a good relationship with the owners of HitechGP, since several young drivers from their academy, such as Liam Lawson or Jüri Vips, have competed for them, but it is inevitable to doubt the viability of a lower category team and of the acceptance that it would have by the rest of the manufacturers involved in the Great Circus.
Another rooster would sing if, for example, Porsche decides to return to the charge in its ambition to enter Formula 1. Last year, it broke off its talks with Red Bull to be its driver and shareholder, but despite this they had not thrown away the towel and kept alive the objective of accessing the championship.
Who knows, maybe there is a lot of information that we don’t know that is already moving behind closed doors in F1, or Red Bull may try to call attention to the highest bidder. The leak of this news in one of the German media of reference in F1, surely it is not accidental…
