The formerly known AlphaTauri team has been renamed Visa Cash App RB, and after hiring new key figures and strengthening its partnership with Red Bull, it’s ready to jump back in 2024.
Analyzing the past
Let’s start with order, though. AlphaTauri had a difficult season in 2022, and despite totalizing 35 points (more than 2023), it only finished 9th. Pierre Gasly already had a lot of experience in the sport – and one win – while Yuki Tsunoda was entering his second year in Formula 1, having shown his talent – and exuberant character – the year before.
Then, in 2023, AlphaTauri signed Nyck de Vries as Gasly left the team to join Alpine. Especially at the beginning of the season, it was difficult for both the rookie and Tsunoda to bring points home since the car lacked speed.
Right before the summer break, AlphaTauri announced that Daniel Ricciardo would replace de Vries, attempting to improve the outfit’s results by hiring a more experienced driver. The Australian got injured just after two races and was replaced by Liam Lawson, who even scored 2 points. At the end of the season, AlphaTauri had 25 points, and even though the tally was lower than the previous season, they climbed one spot in the general standings.
A possible turning point
The Singapore GP was a turning point for its season, where the team brought key updates to the car to improve its performance. These new components were mainly inspired by its sister car, the RB19, showing the beginning of a closer partnership between the two outfits that will be even stronger in 2024.
Not only that, earlier that year, it was announced that Laurent Mekies, former Assistant Team Principal and Race Director at Ferrari, would replace Franz Tost as team principal at (now) RB F1 Team. Another big step forward to improve the whole team’s structure was made just a few days ago when RB confirmed that Tim Goss would become the new CTO, Alan Permane the racing director, and Guillaume Cattelani the deputy technical director.
Ahead of the 2024 season, the relationship between RB and Red Bull created concerns for some teams. For example, McLaren team principal Zak Brown admitted being unhappy with what is going on, and believes that “it’s a serious issue for the fairness of the sport, for the fans.”
Other teams, however, are not too preoccupied with that partnership. James Allison said that Mercedes is not worried since “it cannot be a strong technical or a strong sporting relationship because the rules forbid that.”
A future underdog?
Whether or not teams are concerned, this stronger partnership makes us wonder if the RB F1 Team can really challenge the top teams. It might happen something similar to what occurred in 2020 with Mercedes and Racing Point, where the latter had a very similar car to the previous year’s Mercedes.
After that season, some rules changed, but in Formula 1, teams have always managed to exploit gray areas of the regulations that are not clear, and it’s not given that it cannot happen again. That might be the biggest concern of some teams. Let’s say RB F1 Team develops a car extremely similar to last year’s Red Bull’s RB19. A challenger with basically the same components, the same design, and the same mechanics, it would probably be competitive enough to score good results in 2024 thanks to how good the RB19 car was last season.
Of course, that is just a hypothesis, but almost every team on the grid now is going toward a Red Bull’s design. Thus, that is not something too far from reality, given how close the two teams seem to be working.
So, given that Red Bull was extremely dominant last year and could start focusing on its 2024 car earlier than others, the Milton Keynes-based team could have the upper hand compared to other outfits, especially at the beginning of the season. Then, should teams like Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, and Aston Martin struggle to close the gap to Red Bull, could Visa Cash App RB exploit the situation and challenge them if its 2024 car is really as competitive as last year’s RB19?