The “VCARB 01” presented Thursday evening in Las Vegas is closer to the concept already used by Red Bull, its big sister team, double reigning world champion among manufacturers. This year, the team will work more closely with Red Bull, notably by moving its British base from Bicester to Milton Keynes, home of the team of triple world champion Max Verstappen.
On the management side, the new French “Team Principal” Laurent Mekies – defector from Ferrari – took the helm of Visa Cash App RB at the start of the year, joined by the Briton Alan Permane, who left the French team Alpine last summer, as race director.
British engineer Tim Goss was appointed technical director of the team after spending almost his entire career at McLaren (1990-2018) before joining the International Automobile Federation (FIA) where he has served since 2021. He will be assisted by Frenchman Guillaume Castellani, appointed deputy technical director, who has more than 15 years of experience in F1 at Lotus, McLaren and Red Bull.
The team based in Faenza, in northern Italy, has been racing since 2020 under the name “AlphaTauri”, named after the clothing brand founded in 2016 by the group known for its energy drinks. Before that, it was known from 2006 to 2019 as Toro Rosso.
Visa Cash App RB will make its debut at the opening round of the season in Bahrain in early March, with Australian Daniel Ricciardo and Japanese Yuki Tsunoda as drivers who will try to do better than a modest 8th place (out of 10) last year in the manufacturers’ ranking.
