Bought for $1. Built into a dynasty. Six constructors' titles across two separate eras of dominance. Then, inside 18 months, the architect of the car left, the team principal of 20 years was dismissed, and the drivers behind the scenes departed for rivals. Oracle Red Bull Racing arrives at the 2026 regulation reset with a new power unit, a new team principal, and a new second driver. The bones of the team Dietrich Mateschitz and Christian Horner built are still in Milton Keynes. The question is what Laurent Mekies can build on top of them.
| Full name | Oracle Red Bull Racing |
| Headquarters | Milton Keynes, England |
| Racing licence | Austrian |
| Ownership | Red Bull GmbH |
| Sister team | Racing Bulls |
| Team principal (2026) | Laurent Mekies |
| Drivers (2026) | Max Verstappen (#3), Isack Hadjar (#6) |
| Power unit (2026) | Red Bull-Ford |
| Championships | 6 Constructors', 8 Drivers' |
| Race wins | 124 (under Horner) |
The team that would become Red Bull Racing began as Stewart Grand Prix, founded by three-time Formula One world champion Sir Jackie Stewart and his son Paul, and entered the sport in 1997. The operation was modest but technically credible. Its highest point came in 1999, when Rubens Barrichello won the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, the only victory in the team's three-season existence. That same year, Jackie Stewart sold the team to the Ford Motor Company.
Ford rebranded the team Jaguar Racing and invested substantially in it over five seasons. The investment did not translate into results. Jaguar won no races, produced no regular podium contenders, and spent its five years in Formula One finishing between eighth and eleventh in the constructors' championship. By 2004, Ford had lost patience. The team was put up for sale with a deadline: any buyer needed to complete the transaction by 15 November 2004 to be permitted to race in the 2005 season.
On 15 November 2004, the deadline day, Red Bull GmbH agreed to purchase Jaguar Racing. Ford asked bidders for a symbolic $1 in return for a commitment to invest $400 million in the team over three Grand Prix seasons.
Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull's co-founder, had been involved in Formula One long before this moment. He had sponsored Gerhard Berger from 1989, the Arrows team, and then Sauber from 1995 to 2004. Owning a team outright was the natural escalation of an involvement that had been building for fifteen years. He ended the Sauber partnership on the same day he took ownership of Jaguar.
Shortly after the acquisition was confirmed, Mateschitz arrived at the factory in Milton Keynes and addressed the assembled staff. He told them his personal F1 hero was Jochen Rindt, the Austrian who won the 1970 championship posthumously. He described the values for which Red Bull stood. He set a goal: win a race within five years, and eventually win the World Championship. He was the team owner standing in front of a factory he had just bought for a dollar, talking about becoming champions. Christian Horner had not yet been appointed.
Mateschitz needed a team principal. His motorsport advisor Helmut Marko knew a candidate. Marko had met Christian Horner years earlier while purchasing a trailer for his junior racing team in 1997. Horner was then running Arden International in Formula 3000, winning the championship three consecutive years. He was also looking for a route into Formula One. The connection was made, Mateschitz and Horner met in early 2005, and Horner was appointed team principal in January 2005 at the age of 31, becoming the youngest in F1 history.
He arrived at the factory on 5 January. The previous management had been dismissed that morning. He was introduced to the team an hour later.
In the first week of the job, Horner sat down for dinner with his lead driver David Coulthard at a restaurant in Woburn, near Milton Keynes. He needed to understand what he had inherited. He asked Coulthard directly: "What exactly am I walking into here?" Coulthard's reply was immediate: "Christian, this is a fucking disaster."
It was the most honest assessment of the starting point anyone could have offered.
The team's car for 2005 was essentially the inherited Jaguar chassis, run with Cosworth engines. It was competitive enough to score 34 points over the season, 24 more than Jaguar had managed the year before, almost all of them provided by Coulthard. The team finished eighth in the constructors'. The results were modest but the culture was improving.
The defining event of 2005 did not happen at a Grand Prix. On 8 November, almost exactly one year after buying the Jaguar team, Red Bull announced the signing of Adrian Newey as chief technical officer. Newey had been McLaren's CTO and was arguably the most sought-after designer in the sport. His recruitment required Coulthard's influence, Coulthard had worked with Newey at McLaren and was instrumental in getting Horner and Newey into the same room and then a meeting in Austria where Mateschitz had to be convinced the financial commitment was justified. It was. Newey also persuaded his former McLaren colleague Peter Prodromou to follow him as head of aerodynamics. Rob Marshall and Jonathan Wheatley, both from world-champion Renault, had already joined as chief designer and sporting director respectively.
The foundational personnel of the dynasty were now in place. Newey would not be able to influence the 2006 car meaningfully, as it had already been designed when he arrived, but from the RB3 onward the trajectory of the team changed.
Coulthard scored the team's first podium in 2006, finishing third at Monaco. It was the same circuit where both Stewart Grand Prix and Jaguar Racing had taken their maiden podiums an odd continuity across three identities of the same team. In the autumn of 2005, separately, Red Bull had purchased the cash-strapped Minardi team and renamed it Scuderia Toro Rosso. The logic was explicit: Toro Rosso would serve as a development pathway, giving young drivers race experience and allowing Helmut Marko's academy to evaluate them before deciding whether to promote them to the main team.
By 2007, with Newey's first full design on the grid (the RB3), the team had switched to Renault engines and was beginning to genuinely challenge for podiums regularly. The car was getting faster. The driver coming through the pipeline was also getting closer.
Sebastian Vettel joined Red Bull from Toro Rosso for 2009, having driven a substitute race for the main team at Monza in 2007 when Coulthard was injured. The RB5, Newey's most competitive design to that point, made the team genuine contenders. Vettel won multiple races and finished runner-up to Jenson Button's Brawn GP on the final day of the season. Red Bull finished second in the constructors'. The building blocks had been assembled.
From 2010, Red Bull won four consecutive Drivers' and Constructors' Championships. Vettel and the RB6 took the 2010 title in a fight that went to the final race in Abu Dhabi. The 2011 campaign was more emphatic. By 2012, Vettel was involved in a championship battle with Fernando Alonso that reached the final race of the season in Brazil, which Vettel won to secure the title. In 2013, the second half of the season became a near-total exhibition: Vettel won nine consecutive races to end the year.
The four consecutive doubles made Red Bull the first team since Schumacher's Ferrari to achieve sustained dominance at that level, and the first Austrian-licensed team to win a Constructors' Championship. They also made them the second-most hated team in the paddock, depending on who was being asked.
The 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix contains what remains the most divisive single moment in the team's internal history. With both cars running in formation late in the race, a multi-21 code (meaning "do not overtake your teammate") was transmitted to Vettel. He ignored it, passed Mark Webber, and won. Webber said publicly and plainly that what Vettel had done was "not right." Horner described himself as "furious." Vettel apologised on the podium. The harmony of the team's public presentation did not fully recover from the moment. Webber left for sports cars at the end of the season after nine victories across seven years. Vettel left for Ferrari after 2014 when Daniel Ricciardo, his new teammate, outscored him in identical machinery,including winning three of Vettel's strongest circuits.
The 2014 season introduced hybrid power units and exposed the limitations of Red Bull's Renault partnership. The Renault power unit was significantly less competitive than Mercedes or Ferrari's equivalent, and the gap was painful for a team that had built its identity on technical excellence. Ricciardo won three races with the difficult RB10 that year, a reflection of his ability rather than the car's competitiveness. Vettel, visibly uncomfortable, signed for Ferrari before the season ended.
The relationship with Renault deteriorated publicly through 2015 and 2016. In 2016, Red Bull rebranded the Renault engine as TAG Heuer, partly as a commercial arrangement and partly as a pointed signal that the partnership had broken down in substance even if not in contract.
On 6 May 2016, five days before the Spanish Grand Prix, Red Bull promoted Max Verstappen from Toro Rosso to the main team, replacing Daniil Kvyat. At the Spanish Grand Prix, both Mercedes cars retired with mechanical failures. Verstappen, in his first race for Red Bull, won. He was 18 years and 228 days old, the youngest race winner in the history of Formula One.
The arrival of Verstappen did not immediately return the team to championship contention. The engines remained a limitation. But the trajectory was clear. Between 2016 and 2018, Ricciardo and Verstappen produced some of the fastest driving seen during the Mercedes-dominant era, repeatedly extracting results from machinery that was not in the same class as the Silver Arrows. At the end of 2018, Ricciardo left for Renault and the team left Renault for Honda.
The move to Honda for 2019 was considered a significant risk. Honda's previous F1 partnership, with McLaren between 2015 and 2017, had been embarrassingly uncompetitive. Red Bull used Toro Rosso effectively as a testbed for the Honda unit in 2018, gained confidence in the direction of development, and committed to the switch for the main team from 2019.
The gamble was vindicated quickly. At the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix, held at the Red Bull Ring, the track Mateschitz had bought and rebuilt in 2004, Verstappen gave Honda its first Formula One victory of the hybrid era. It was described as one of the greatest days in the history of the organisation.
The 2021 season ran from its opening round to its final lap as the closest championship battle since 2008. Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton traded the points lead across 22 races, colliding memorably at Silverstone and Monza, and arrived at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix equal on points.
The final lap of that race became one of the most debated moments in Formula One history. Under a safety car period, race director Michael Masi permitted only five of the lapped cars between Verstappen and Hamilton to pass and rejoin behind, contravening Article 48.12 of the sporting regulations, which required either all lapped cars to be permitted through or none. The five that did pass were precisely those between the two title contenders. Verstappen, on fresh tyres, passed Hamilton on the final lap and won the race and the championship.
The FIA's investigation found "human error" on the part of Masi. He was removed from the race director role. An automated system to identify lapped cars was implemented for subsequent seasons. The championship result was upheld.
New technical regulations introduced in 2022 produced a reset of the competitive order. Red Bull, under Newey's design leadership, produced the RB18, a car that took time to develop during the season but ultimately proved faster than the field. Verstappen won 15 races. The constructors' title came for the first time since 2013. Sergio Perez, now in his second year as Verstappen's teammate, finished third in the championship. It was the most complete season the team had produced since 2013.
Dietrich Mateschitz died on 22 October 2022, before the season finished. He had approved the creation of Red Bull Powertrains, the internal engine programme that would become the team's 2026 power unit, as one of his last major strategic decisions. He had set a goal in a factory in Milton Keynes in November 2004: win the championship. His team had won it six times by the time he died.
The RB19 will be referenced in the same conversation as dominant championship cars for as long as the sport exists. Red Bull won 21 of 22 races. Verstappen won 19 of them, breaking Vettel's single-season record of 13. His run of ten consecutive victories broke Vettel's record of nine. The team surpassed Williams to move fourth all-time in constructor wins. No team had ever won such a proportion of a Formula One season's races.
The dominance also came with a cost that would become visible the following year: the team had so thoroughly outpaced the rest of the field that there was little incentive, and limited time, to examine what would happen when the margins compressed.
The 2024 season began with Red Bull as the dominant force. Verstappen won seven of the first ten races. Then, during the Miami Grand Prix weekend in May, Red Bull Racing announced that Adrian Newey was departing after 19 years. The announcement coincided with a broader deterioration in team relationships that had been accelerating since early 2024 when an internal investigation was launched into allegations of misconduct against Christian Horner. Horner was cleared twice. But Jos Verstappen, publicly, called for Horner's removal. The relationship between Horner and Newey cooled. Newey left for Aston Martin in March 2025.
Sergio Perez, who had been a reliable points scorer in 2021 and 2022, deteriorated significantly in the second half of 2024. Despite multiple contract extensions and what was described as an uncharacteristically patient approach from the team, Perez simply could not maintain the pace required. His contract was mutually terminated on 18 December 2024. Two days later, it was announced that Liam Lawson would partner Verstappen for 2025.
Jonathan Wheatley, the sporting director for 18 years who had arrived alongside Rob Marshall from Renault in 2005, had announced his departure during the 2024 summer break. He left at the end of 2024 and joined Audi as their incoming team principal for 2026.
On 9 July 2025, Christian Horner was dismissed as team principal with immediate effect, ending a 20-year tenure. Laurent Mekies, who had been running Racing Bulls, was named as his replacement. Horner had won six Constructors' Championships and eight Drivers' titles across those 20 years, and 124 Grand Prix races, the second-most wins for any team principal in history.
In the space of approximately 18 months, Red Bull had lost its chief technical officer, its chief designer (Craig Skinner departed in February 2026), its sporting director of 18 years, and its team principal of 20 years.
Since Daniel Ricciardo left at the end of 2018, Red Bull has cycled through five second drivers in six years without finding one who can sustain performance alongside Verstappen. Gasly was promoted in 2019 and replaced mid-season. Albon replaced Gasly mid-2019 and was dropped at the end of 2020. Perez drove four seasons before his contract was terminated. Lawson was announced in December 2024 and replaced mid-2025 by Hadjar. The pattern, rapid promotion from Racing Bulls, inadequate performance relative to Verstappen, departure,has repeated itself with a consistency that amounts to a structural challenge rather than a run of bad luck.
Verstappen won eight races in 2025, more than any other driver on the grid for the fifth consecutive year. He lost the championship to Lando Norris by two points 421 to 423 in what was described as possibly the most impressive season of his career in terms of extracting from an inferior car what no other driver could have matched. The team nonetheless finished third in the constructors' behind McLaren and Ferrari for the second successive year.
Red Bull enters the 2026 season as the sport's most significant unknown quantity. The regulation reset, the largest technical change in over a decade, affecting power unit architecture, aerodynamics, and weight, has removed the inherited advantage of the RB19 and RB20 era. The team is running a Red Bull-Ford power unit rather than the Honda-badged unit it has used since 2019. Mekies is in his first full season as team principal. Hadjar, 21, is in his first season for the main team after one year at Racing Bulls.
Verstappen described the team's position at the start of pre-season testing as unlikely to be fighting for victories immediately. A new wind tunnel is operational. The structural pieces Newey, Horner, Wheatley, and Mateschitz assembled are gone or changed. What Mekies, Verstappen, and Hadjar build in 2026 will define whether this is the beginning of a third Red Bull era or an extended transition.
Red Bull's driver academy, overseen throughout by Helmut Marko, has produced more Formula One race winners than any comparable programme in the sport. Sebastian Vettel (four world championships), Max Verstappen (four world championships), Daniel Ricciardo (eight wins), and Carlos Sainz are the most prominent graduates. Pierre Gasly, Daniil Kvyat, Alexander Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson, and Isack Hadjar have all passed through the system. The junior pipeline runs through Racing Bulls, which serves the same function today that Toro Rosso served from 2006 onward: race kilometres, evaluation, and a defined route to the main team for those who prove themselves.
| Year | Drivers' Champion | Points | Constructors' |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Vettel | 256 | 1st |
| 2011 | Vettel | 392 | 1st |
| 2012 | Vettel | 281 | 1st |
| 2013 | Vettel | 397 | 1st |
| 2021 | Verstappen | 395.5 | 2nd |
| 2022 | Verstappen | 454 | 1st |
| 2023 | Verstappen | 575 | 1st |
| 2024 | Verstappen | 437 | 3rd |
| 2025 | Norris (McLaren) | — | 3rd |
Team totals: 6 Constructors' Championships · 8 Drivers' Championships · 124 Grand Prix victories (under Horner, 2005–2025)
Last updated March 2026
