Red Bull Racing is one of the most prominent Formula 1 teams at the moment that has its operations based at Milton Keynes in England but the license that it operates with, is Austrian, which is the home of the Red Bull Energy Drink brand. It is the sister team of the Scuderia Toro Rosso, which is another team that is owned by the beverage company that is registered as Red Bull GmbH. Over the last couple of seasons, the team is having an extended run of successes, something that has culminated into two constructors’ championships in the 2009-2010 season as well as the 2010-2011 season, which is yet to concluded, but the team is so far ahead in terms of championship points that no other team can catch it with only two races remaining. When Red Bull Racing won the constructors’ title last season, it became the first and only team so far to win the constructors’ title with an Austrian license.
Moreover, the team also boasts of the best young driver the sport has seen in many years, almost since the rise of Michael Schumacher in Sebastian Vettel. It was mainly due to championship winning efforts of Vettel that the team was able to win the constructors’ title so easily, as he went on to become the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history last season. This season also saw Vettel becoming the champion with races to spare. Along with Australian hard man Mark Webber, the team perhaps has the best driver combination on the grid and this combination of Webber and Vettel has seen the team gather 36 pole positions and 26 race victories in the last two seasons.
The origins of Red Bull Racing can be traced back to the Stewart Grand Prix, a racing team owned by Formula 1 legend Jackie Stewart who saw his team hit the tracks in 1997. But with little success over the years, he sold the team to Ford and thus was born the Jaguar Racing Team. In November 2004, a deal was reached between Red Bull GmbH and Ford Motors to sell the Jaguar team to the company which was then rebranded as Red Bull Racing. Although it was still using the Cosworth engines for that season, it would subsequently change to Ferrari engines and with a lot of research work put into the designing of chassis and their own engines, Red Bull Racing has become a force to be reckoned with.
Redbull is a very popular energy drink, created by an Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz,and Thai businessman Chaleo Yoovidhya and it contains caffeine, taurine, glucose. glucuronolactone, and sucrose. One factor that popularizes the brand is the aggressive international marketing campaign. The most popular sponsored activities are BMX, mountain biking, windsurfing, motocross, rally, cliff-diving, kayaking, snowboarding, skating, wakeboarding, and Formula 1 racing.
Apart from appealing to the youth by including celebrities and hosting events (like Rampage, road rage, crashed ice, x-fighters, Flugtug, paper wings and many more) and contests, redbull is known to sponsor football teams, with red bull trademark for clubs in Germany, Austria, Brazil and the United States. These sport activities gives a power image to the brand. A very unique slogan is used by the company is “it gives you wings”. The major team ownerships of the company relate to sports like soccer, hockey and racing. The football teams like RB Leipzig (playing in German Regionalliga Nord), FC Red Bull Salzburg (an Austrian football club competing in Austrian Bundesliga), Red bull brasil (a Brazilian team playing for Campeonato Paulista Série A2), New York Red Bulls(competing in Major League Soccer of USA) as well as EC Red Bull Salzburg ( an Austrian hockey team playing in Austrian Hockey League) are owned by the company.
Redbull has good hold on the formula one car racing as well. The Red Bull Racing (an English Formula One team), the Scuderia Toro Rosso (Italy based Formula One team), Team Red Bull, (the racing team in competition with US based NASCAR), are to name a few. Also in 2009, the company hired popular sports athletes like Reggie Bush of the NFL fame, to do endorsements for them. This catches the attention of the youngsters towards the product. As per market share, it is the most popular drink in the world.
Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel has added Lotus F1 among the top contenders for 2012 season and he also believes that Lotus will be a threat for his own team Red Bull Racing.
When most people are predicting that this year will also be dominated by teams like Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren – Mercedes, the defending champ believes that Lotus is the team to watch out for after back to back impressive performances both at Jerez and at Barcelona.
Vettel, however, thinks that the new Lotus is more powerful threat compared to its predecessor, especially with the combination of Kimi Raikkonen, the former world champion and Romain Grosjean behind the wheel. The German race driver spoke to the official Formula 1 website during the final pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya during the weekend. The German driver shared the brand new RB8 car with his team-mate Mark Webber for the last two days of testing, accepting that both expected the new parts to be added in the car.
When questioned about how close he felt of RB8 being an ideal car, Vettel told that if one look up and down the pit-lane, his guess is that everybody else is more or less in the same situation. He further added that the last few days are quite significant as one get the car closer and closer to what you will be racing; therefore it is time to wait and watch if they have the right bits and pieces. But, even as they get close towards the car they will have for the first race – as everyone else also does – it is hard to tell who is quick and who is only playing around with the fuel loads.
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November 7, 2011 5:52 pm | 
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