Scuderia AlphaTauri has been competing in the Formula 1 World Championship since 2006. With Red Bull Racing already in F1, the team was created with a view to finding two extra cockpits for the stars of the future coming through the ranks of the Red Bull Junior Driver Programme. Red Bull had dabbled in motor sport sponsorship for many years and in fact, Gerhard Berger was the first athlete the Austrian company supported. However, Red Bull’s Dietrich Mateschitz wanted to aim higher and in 2004, he bought out the Jaguar Racing F1 team, based in Milton Keynes and rebranded it as Red Bull Racing. But what to do with the talented youngsters on the Red Bull books? The answer was to acquire the Minardi team in 2005, which started racing as Scuderia AlphaTauri a year later.

When the team was first established, it operated partly as a satellite to Red Bull Racing, running a car designed mainly by Red Bull Technology. However, since 2010, Scuderia AlphaTauri has run completely independently, doing all the car design and manufacturing work in-house in Faenza. This necessitated a major expansion programme for the factory, with a brand new purpose-built facility coming on stream a couple of years ago. The Italian side of the operation is supported by the team’s wind tunnel facility in Bicester, England. Team Principal Franz Tost has been at the helm since 2005, while the technical side is managed by Technical Director James Key.

Our current driver line-up of Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly both came through the Junior Driver Programme. In 2015, Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen were the youngest ever driver pairing in Formula 1 with a combined age of just 37. Our reputation for bringing on young talent is brought out by other statistics relating to our drivers: Verstappen holds the record as the youngest driver to score points in F1, thanks to his 7th place in the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix at the age of 17 years and 180 days. Sainz briefly held the record himself, having finished ninth in the previous round, the Australian Grand Prix, at the age of 20 years and 195 days old. Previous holders include Daniil Kvyat (19 years 324 days), Jaime Alguersari (20 years 12 days) and Sébastien Buemi (20 years 149 days).

Currently the team has one win and one pole position to its name, both courtesy of Sebastian Vettel, who produced the fairytale result at the team’s home race, the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, back in 2008.