AlphaTuari to become Racing Bulls

This weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will see the AlphaTauri name for the last time in Formula 1, as the Austrian fashion brand is about to shutdown its commercial activities after completely bombing in its short existence.

With no clothes company to promote anymore, Red Bull will now submit a new name for its junior team to compete under.

According to German sources, Racing Bulls will be the name under which the Faenza-based team will compete from now on, after plans to change the team’s name to match the future title sponsor were scrapped.

The reason for that plan to be abandoned was that it would be unlikely Formula 1, the FIA and the other teams would accept another name change once the sponsorship deal would end, so after being Toro Rosso from 2006 to 2019 and AlphaTauri in the last four seasons, the team that was born as Minardi in 1985 will have its fourth iteration from the start of next year.

But without AlphaTauri’s commercial support, the team that will be run by Peter Bayer and Laurent Mekies from now on, also needed to find a new title sponsorship, as it had been made pretty clear by the new management of Red Bull, that the drinks company would no longer be pouring all the money needed to run a second team that, unlike the main team, runs at a loss because it doesn’t get enough money from Formula 1’s prize fund and from commercial deals.

Negotiations with Adidas went quite down the line and looked promising but a last minute turn-around from the sports fashion company forced Bayer and Franz Tost to look elsewhere for a new sponsor.

According to sources from the team, peer-to-peer payment platform CashApp has now signed a deal to be the team’s title sponsor for a period of five years, so there will be a lot of green colour applied in next year’s car, but in a much brighter shade than Aston Martin’s, so it will be easy to spot Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo.

The announcements of the two changes should happen after the end of the season but before the end of the year, as there are no commercial restrictions from AlphaTauri fashion brand, given it’s also owned by Red Bull, and it will make for positive coverage of the team at the end of a largely disappointing 2023 campaign.

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool

For more of the latest motorsport news, pick up the latest issue of AUTO ACTION or subscribe HERE

On this week’s Auto Action RevLimiter, we ramble on about Supercars. Why the finances don’t need a boost! What’s wrong with the calendar! Plus more!