Last Updated on December 19 2023, 11:29 am
AlphaTauri, the Red Bull owned junior Formula One team, is set for an exciting new rebrand and a significant change in operational capabilities for 2024.
Whilst the official FIA entry list has been published the names there are still provisional as the sports governing body allows changes due to the finalisation of sponsor deals for the coming year. For now all we know for sure is the Faenza based team is listed as Scuderia AlphaTauri RB, but strong paddock rumours suggest the headline name on the livery will be the “Racing Bulls.”
Marko spells out reasons for AT relocation
As exciting as it is for a team to have a new identity and a new livery to compliment this, the real story for 2024 is how AlphaTauri (AT) will revolutionise its operational methods.
Dr. Helmut Marko spoke extensively on the future for AT during the 2023 season and significantly the former Minardi team will move a number of its operational functions to its presently small UK base.
Speaking to Fomrula1.de, Marko confirmed the rumours of a potential sale of AT were false: “it was always very clear that AlphaTauri would remain in-house,” due to the team being “an important part of our junior work.”
Marko then bluntly admitted a relocation to England was on the cards. “It’s obvious that we’re playing through various options, including England. AlphaTauri already has over 100 employees in England. It’s a split between Italy and England because it’s much easier to find employees in England.”
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From Milton Keynes down to Woking where McLaren are based is just 67 miles and this represents the length of England’s “motorsport valley” where 7 teams have their operational bases.
F1 teams are now often are made up of over 1000 personnel and attract people who want more regular lifestyles than the old fashion globe trotting grease monkeys of the 1970’s. As Frederick Vasseur admitted this year, the new breed of F1 family focused team members are hard to relocate when they are offered a new position in another team, given the ties they have in their present community.
“You can move from Red Bull to Mercedes, keep the same hours, keep children in the same school and from the Friday to the Monday you can change [teams] and everything is perfect,” Vasseur said at the Canadian GP.
“If you want to come to Italy, it’s a different approach. You have to change the family environment and so on.”
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Franz Toste talks of England move
So if the biggest brand in F1 struggle to relocate UK based F1 team personnel then for AT an hour down the road from Maranello it is doubly difficult and so a relocation to England makes sense.
Outgoing AT team principal Franz Tost also commented on the topic when speaking to racing265.com.
“If you look to the top teams, they have built up fantastic infrastructure in the last years with a lot of simulation tools. They have the best people and midfield teams – not only us – have to come up with better simulation tools.”
“It depends now whether we want to reach out for something in the future, but of course, in England regarding the people, the teams [based there] have an advantage because nearly all of them are [there]. [This is] because the market for Formula 1 experienced people is much bigger than in Italy.”
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AT running RB19 chassis in 2024
In an equally big change of modus operandi, Dr. Marko also confirmed AT will stop ploughing its own furrow like Williams and copy the Haas F1 model where they buy all the F1 car parts allowable under FIA regulations from Ferrari. Buying in ready made and assembled components from Red Bull will address another of the AT stakeholders concerns – that costs were too high.
In yesteryear, the F1 regulations allowed teams to buy a previous season’s chassis from another team and run it as their own the following year and as the 2023 season drew to a close, rumours swirled suggesting AT would be using a lot of the RB19 for 2024. Were the RB19 run in its end of ’23 season Abu Dhabi specification – for the first race in Bahrain ‘24, it is highly likely it would be very competitive even against the new designs of the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari.
This would instantly revolutionise AT’s on track performance and though not allowed, even being allowed to use significant parts of the RB19 will launch AT further up the grid – which is causing concern for a number of other teams.
F1 teams deep concern over AT/Red Bull partnership
McLaren boss Zak Brown is worried over the new Red Bull/AT collaboration and questions whether this kind of relationship should continue to be legal.
“It is two teams with common ownership, which you wouldn’t have in other sports. “[It could benefit Red Bull in] a lot of different ways. There is a reason why they are moving a lot of their people from Italy.
“As Helmut [Marko, Red Bull motorsport advisor] has said, they are going to do absolutely everything they can to benefit from having two teams.
“I get that because that’s what the rules say. But I think we need to look at the governance of the sport around technical alliances,” concluded Brown.
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Longtime F1 writer, Joe Saward, with connections throughout the paddock raises the spectre of even more integration between AT and Red Bull. He suggests he present Bicester base of AT will be relocated to the Red Bull campus in Milton Keynes, his theory based on a Red Bull planning application.
Saward revealed the construction planning consent for Red Bull’s new wind tunnel was withdrawn after the Qatar GP. Red Bull claimed they had a better site for it next to their design office.
However, the initial planned wind tunnel construction site, still owned by Red Bull, according to the journalist will now become the new British headquarters of AlphaTauri.
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New AT base at gates of Milton Keynes
Of course all this is speculation and it could be that the next Concorde agreement will pave the way for a glide path towards regulations which ban teams from being owned by another in time for the following F1 Concorde agreement planned for 2030.
Dr. Marko dismissed the notion that AT will move its entire operation to England in the near future anyway. “The idea that the entire team will immediately move over there is also an over interpretation,” he told Fomrula1.de
Yet this does not mean by 2025 AT cannot be firmly ensconced outside the gates of the current Red Bull Milton Keynes operation. Neither does it rule out the 2024 rebranded AT car contains a large number of winning components from the all conquering RB19 of 2023.
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With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
