With a new name, a new visual identity and a new driver, Racing Bulls begins a new cycle in Formula 1 from 2025. Following on from the profound changes made last year, moving fromAlpha Tauri to Visa Cash App RB, the Italian team has also changed paradigm. From a simple "junior team" of Red Bull, the Faenza-based outfit now aims to aim higher and break that “glass ceiling” in the Constructors’ Championship. Indeed, since the acquisition of the Minardi team at the end of 2005, the Faenza team – through its many identities – has never done better than 6th place.
To do this, Racing Bulls has undertaken a major reorganization ahead of the 2025 season, including the relocation of its aerodynamics department from Bicester to Milton Keynes, where the parent team's headquarters are located. A rapprochement assumed in order to take the trans training to a new levelalpine, but a major change that Racing Bulls will have to assimilate and digest during the first part of the season. To facilitate this transition, the team led by Laurent Mekies will be able to rely on Yuki tsunoda, who will be competing in his fifth season with the Italian team and who will become the driver who has competed in the most Grands Prix with the Faenza team. At his side, a young wolf with a keen appetite, Isack Hadjar, ready to experience his first season in F1.
Racing Bulls must be " just behind the Top Teams » futures
A new duo mixing experience and youth who will have the task of embodying the new ambitions of Racing Bulls… even if, for Yuki Tsunoda, the path could end at the end of the season with a contract that expires in 2025. On the sidelines of the winter tests organized in Bahrain, Laurent Mekies spoke about the restructuring of his team, started last year and continued this winter. According to the French manager, Red Bull has given a mission to the sister team.
"When Red Bull decided to press reset and start this team from scratch, they did it by asking us to create a team competitive enough to be just behind the Top Teams., confided the Team Principal of Racing Bulls to the microphone of Canal+. And if we look at the grid today, it means being able to beat one, two or three manufacturers, so there is a long road that we are undertaking to strengthen our structures, our processes and our personnel, to be able to be credible in this fight. It is not something that we are going to be able to do in a month and at the same time, there is the reality of the race.
A compromised start to the 2025 season?
As the 2025 season dawns, Racing Bulls has not really distinguished itself during winter testing, with a programme more focused on long runs to allow Isack Hadjar to train in race simulation. For Laurent Mekies, like the other nine teams, the most important deadline is 2026… and this could imply, with the recent movements and the move of the Bicester facilities to Milton Keynes, that the Italian team will be in difficulty during the first Grands Prix. Nevertheless, given the competitiveness and compactness of the 2025 grid, the French manager believes that Racing Bulls will be in the match at the heart of the pack.
"We are aware that this 2025 season has something extraordinary, recognizes Laurent Mekies. This is the last season of this regulatory cycle. We saw how close the teams were last year, it's going to get even closer. We think it's going to be extraordinary, probably already for the four teams in front. And behind these four Top Teams, what's going to happen between the six teams that are going to play for fifth place? We're going to see weekends with teams that adapt better to the circuit, we're probably going to see twelve cars separated by one or two tenths, and that's going to make us completely switch between thinking that we've done a good job and thinking that we've missed our objectives.
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Yves-Henri RANDIER
05/03/2025 at 12:19 a.m.
A year of transition with the last season for TsunHonda and an apprenticeship for the rookie Hadjar who will try to get ahead of his teammate in order to be in a better position in 2026 and assume the role of leader with the rookie Arvid Lindblad!