Red Bull cuts its wings

Ehe signing of Checo Prez to replace Alexander Albon in 2021 has meant that Red Bull will not have any driver from its famous and very tough quarry in the first team. Go back to 2008, when Coulthard and Webber last shared a team. The two signed, as with the Mexican and Max Verstappen.

The Dutchman, now the team’s flag, also arrived young, in August 2014, But he didn’t train in the Red Bull talent crusher but he also came to blow his checkbook in a tough fight with Mercedes. And directly debut in Formula 1 with Carlos Sainz in Toro Rosso 2015.

The Red Bull Junior Team was formed two decades ago, five years before the arrival in F1 with the purchase of the Jaguar by Dietrich Mateschizt, who put former driver Helmut Marko at the helm. And one of the first to be in orbit was the Spanish Antonio Garca, a talent at the height of Fernando Alonso, as the Asturian often affirms. Although he was also one of the first to suffer the rigors of this demanding quarry: barely lasted four races in the 2001 Formula 3000 because it governs the maxim of showing off or getting eliminated without hesitation.

Next to the arrived Carlos Sainz, very long-lived since 2010 with Formula BMW until reaching Toro Rosso, Jaime Alguersuari who managed two Renault titles with them, but got fired afterand so abrupt as was his entrance, and Dani juncadella, who was with them for two seasons in Formula BMW, at different times during these two decades.

Four Spaniards among the nearly one hundred kids who are recruited with the alluring allure of all free. They pay for your career, in the best teams, your salary, your progression and training, which in many cases exceeds one million euros, and five on several occasions, but at any time you can be struck down or demoted to team B. Sometimes in the middle of the season. Or receive a scolding like Alguersuari for not keeping up with Vettel in a simple free training session. Or being publicly skinned, a very Marko style, the real terror of kids. Starting on pole in Germany in Formula BMW, Sainz still remembers seeing the boss of the race arrive on the grid and approach the helmet to demand victory under penalty of excommunication.

If success is measured in champions, only one has come out of this way of understanding racing, Sebastian Vettel, the only one also capable of winning races with both teams in the house, which he arrived there in 2002. A champion among the 18 that have been able to reach F1 (only four have won races, Vettel, Ricciardo, Webber and Gasly) in either of the two teams, from the first steps of the different formulas.

The last of them, Yuki Tsunoda, the second Japanese after Yoshitaka Kuroda, who arrives at Alpha Tauri and who has left behind, for now, another 12 members of the increasingly extensive junior team, which competes in Italian F2, F3, F4. and German, Japanese Super Formula or New Zealand Toyota Racing Series. With him they are a quarter of the 2021 grid (Sainz, Ricciardo, Vettel, Gasly, Tsunoda) the pilots emerged from this example of excessive demand, but unquestionable performance.