Red Bull has ruled out selling its second Formula 1 team AlphaTauri.
German publication Auto Motor und Sport reported last weekend that Red Bull’s senior management was considering whether to put AlphaTauri up for sale or to relocate it from its current home in Faenza in Italy to share Red Bull’s main motorsport campus in Milton Keynes in the UK.
The first of these options appears to have been definitively dismissed, according to a statement from AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost after talks with Red Bull’s managing director Oliver Mintzlaff.
“I had some very good meetings with Oliver Mintzlaff, who confirmed that the shareholders will not sell Scuderia AlphaTauri, and that Red Bull will continue supporting the team in the future,” said Tost.
“All these rumours have no foundation, and the team has to remain focused for the start of the season to perform better than last year.”
In the wake of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz’s death, Tost told The Race last November that AlphaTauri’s future was secure in the medium-term.
While AlphaTauri is based in Italy, it already has an aerodynamic department office in Bicester and uses the Red Bull windtunnel at Bedford.
There are some complications with the two Red Bull teams’ arrangement such as less synergy than the rules allow because AlphaTauri saves money building certain components that are cheaper to make than to buy all the Red Bull Racing parts at the higher nominated fee mandated in the rules.
Red Bull has owned AlphaTauri – which it rebranded from its previous Toro Rosso identity in 2020 – since the end of 2005, when it acquired what had been the Minardi team to create a second F1 squad as a stepping stone to its senior team for its growing pack of junior drivers.
Though it’s the second-string team and has never been a regular frontrunner, AlphaTauri has two grand prix wins – both at Monza, with Sebastian Vettel in 2008 and Pierre Gasly in 2020.
Last season was one of its worst, as it slipped back to ninth in the constructors’ championship.
