'It Would Be Very Unfair' To Put Junior In Red Bull Seat Because Of Insane Expectations

Monday, 11 December 2023 at 11:00

Christian Horner explained how Red Bull takes advantage of the AlphaTauri team in order to prepare its juniors for F1.

Both Red Bull and AlphaTauri are F1 teams owned by the same company - Red Bull GmbH. While the two sister teams cannot work together in the Championship, they can share drivers.

AlphaTauri has only lately been rebranded to Red Bull's sister team. Before, it was called a junior team as Red Bull used to give chance to young rookies in AlphaTauri where they could gain experience and show their talent.

Multiple F1 drivers that we know today came from AlphaTauri (or Toro Rosso as it was called in the past). Names include Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly, and Alex Albon, Daniel Ricciardo, but also World Champions like Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen.

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Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner lately explained why rookies couldn't go straight to Red Bull as he told Sky Sports:

“"The expectations on the Red Bull drivers are so high it would be very unfair to put a junior straight in to Red Bull Racing."”

In fact, Red Bull has in the past made the mistake of putting pretty much fresh rookies into Red Bull. Both Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly got their chance in the top team, but they were not ready for it at the time in 2019 and 2020.

Nowadays, Red Bull prefers two experienced drivers in the team as they need consistent results without mistakes which rookies usually can't avoid.

“"That's the luxury of having AlphaTauri. It has provided Max, it has provided Seb, Daniel Ricciardo, so many of our drivers over the years have come out of AlphaTauri cars."”

On the other hand, as AlphaTauri upgraded its status to the sister team this year, it announced it would prefer always to have at least one experienced driver.

AlphaTauri wants to get closer to competing for the Grand Prix wins and to do that, the team needs stability and the advice of an experienced driver who will help with the direction of the car development and so on.

The last rookie who got his chance in AlphaTauri was Liam Lawson, who unfortunately did not get a contract for the next season, but rumors suggest we might see him in AlphaTauri soon.