General Features
Will Red Bull's involvement In F1 Help America?
By by: Mark Gero
Jan 17, 2005, 09:49

When Red Bull Racing bought out the former Jaguar team in November of 2004, it secured a lot of jobs at the Milton Keynes, England, facility. But what it might also have done is set a trend where American involvement in Formula One could be beginning as well.

For many years, Red Bull chairman Dietrich Maeschitz has envisioned a team that, in his eyes, is “All American”.

The idea never got much past the talking stage, but after the failed attempt by former Grand Prix racer Dan Gurney to put an American team into Formula One, the Austrian beverage company finally took the reigns of the idea.

The recent purchase of Jaguar is certainly in the right step. However, there are a lot of hills to climb before such an attempt, if any at all, can be realized.

Firstly, there are a lot of ties with the British, which means that some American workers, if they get picked, would have to travel to Europe to work. As in other places in the world compared to the United States, culture is quite different. The Americans that would get hired for these jobs would have to get used to such differences, so there is still some hope, though it would likely take some time to sort out.

Then there is the problem of American involvement in the sport. Recently, Ford had the hold on Jaguar Racing, and they chose not listen to the European's advice. They were instead content to concentrate on their own ideas. As a result, we saw the departures of Neil Ressler, Bobby Rahal and Jac Nassar, all American citizens, from the squad. Then, Ford altogether, decided it was too expensive to run the project without winning results and sold the team and its Cosworth subsidiary to other customers.

However, Maeschitz’s idea is not really born from those problems. As in all business practices, it is his product (Red Bull energy drink) that is the most important issue. America is a big country, and the drink’s plan for success is to get bigger in the States, and already it is starting to take off. But it needs more popularity, and this is what the Austrian’s target really is.

At this point, the idea itself is beginning to take shape. Former Grand Prix driver Danny Sullivan, an American and a former Formula One racer himself, approached Maeschitz to support an idea where young U.S. drivers can try out for an attempt to race first in smaller Formulas in Europe, and work their way up to a possibility to compete later on in Formula One. The idea worked well, and the Red Bull driver search program has some amount of success in the possibility of producing such drivers as Scott Speed, who recently won the Formula Renault championship and could be on the way to being a race driver or tester on the Red Bull team. But the idea was shelved for the time being when Maeschitz decided to take Vitantonio Luzzi and Christian Klien as the final two drivers. It is still yet to be determined whether or not one or the other will be the second driver or tester. So this means that the American Speed is out the door, at least for the time being.

But Maeschitz is a very determined individual, and his dream could be a reality in the next few years. But unless somehow a US team can be added to the Formula One field, or at the very least he finds a way to add more Americans to his staff, the idea will have to wait until more opportunities eventually come around.

If this does not come to pass, then U.S. involvement in this top echelon of motor sport will stay in a dry spell as it has for the last 11 years, with racing sites and sponsors the only source of participation in the sport.

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