How Racing Bulls has adopted its “location-free” approach with Red Bull relationship

While Racing Bulls – and its previous monikers – has shared common technology with its ‘parent’ Red Bull squad throughout its 19-year tenure in Formula 1, the team is a bona fide constructor in its own right.

The Italian-registered squad leans on Red Bull for gearboxes, suspension, and other tradeable components to ensure its own operations do not swell unnecessarily, but it has also been improving its own infrastructure to ensure that it can remain competitive.

Having come to the conclusion that its old Bicester facilities were far too small, Racing Bulls invested in a new UK department based in Milton Keynes – effectively across the road from Red Bull’s campus.

This has allowed it to spread its workforce across two bases, taking the decision not to pigeon-hole certain departments into a chosen facility.

Team principal Laurent Mekies, in an interview with Autosport’s sister publication Motorsport.com Italy, says that the decision not to “localise” each department ensures that communication between the two sites has been enhanced, and also allows the staff freedom of choice to choose whether to base themselves in the UK or Italy.

“It’s a complex process,” Mekies said. “If you ask me today whether having two locations is an advantage, I’d say no, it’s not – because in this business, everything relies on people and communication between them, and that’s difficult to manage.

“We made a crucial decision not to localise departments in just one of the two sites, whether it’s aero, design, or production. Instead, we chose a model where each of these departments has staff both in Faenza and Milton Keynes.

“We call this model ‘Location Free’, and we adopted it for one reason: the ability to recruit people in both England and Italy.

“We have this opportunity, so to maximise it, we expanded it to all departments. This way, we can offer employees the choice to work in Italy or the UK, which is also useful in retaining staff when life choices come into play.”

Mekies also explained that, while Racing Bulls’ continued acceptance of Red Bull-designed components ensured the team did not have to invest heavily in expanding its workforce or in research and development, there are a handful of disadvantages to doing so.

He noted that, given the team’s lack of involvement in the design processes for those components, “you don’t fully grasp the reasoning behind certain design choices, which can be a challenge when we are fighting for every tenth of a second”.

After all, those parts are designed for Red Bull to fit into its own aerodynamic philosophy; for Racing Bulls, it must develop its own car with those limitations.

“From Red Bull’s perspective, it makes sense that with two teams in Formula 1, they share the few components allowed by the regulations rather than hiring an extra hundred people to duplicate work already being done elsewhere,” Mekies added.

Regardless, everything else at Racing Bulls’ two bases is indicative of a fully fledged constructor, rather than of a ‘junior team’ receiving little more than cast-offs from its bigger brother.

Despite its links to Red Bull, Racing Bulls – Mekies argued – effectively operates as an independent team, rather than one linked with a manufacturer in the automotive industry.

The team was, for a season, Honda’s works entity before Red Bull took that over in 2019. When Ford makes its return to F1 as a partner to Red Bull Powertrains, it will work with the lead Red Bull team on defining concepts – and Racing Bulls will, effectively, get what it’s given.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

“Our facilities house engineers working on simulation, vehicle mechanics, carbon fibre, aerodynamics, car dynamics – it’s the definition of a constructor,” Mekies said.

“I’d also add that, apart from us and Williams, every other team is connected in some way to an automotive manufacturer. This makes our journey even more fascinating because we are competing against giants.

“The goal is to evolve our team into a model that can be competitive in the future.

“We’ve seen that the midfield has made big steps forward, so we need to invest in people, processes, and infrastructure. We have invested in our new facility in Milton Keynes as well as in Faenza, and we’ve grown a lot.

“But, while we work on this, we also have a grand prix to tackle every two weeks, so we need to manage our energy wisely.”