F1 Pictures: Red Bull Strip

Showing posts with label Red Bull Strip. Show all posts

Friday, February 13, 2009

Four: Mark Webber in… ‘Road To Recovery!’

Mark Weber in:
Road to Recovery

Mark Webber starts his third year in Red Bull Racing colours as the senior driver in the squad, hoping to produce the results of which we know he is capable. Occasionally dogged by misfortune, his road accident back in November was very,very bad luck, but he worked hard over the winter to speed through his recovery.
Webber made his Formula One debut with Minardi in 2002. It was a fairytale first: the team had not scored a point since 1999 and Mark finished his maiden race, at home in Australia, in fifth place, ending the season as the undisputed rookie of the year. Eleven years after the inevitable start in karts, Webber was beginning to make his mark in the sport’s top discipline. After karts and Formula Ford in his native Australia came the equally inevitable move to England for more single-seater experience and he put his name on the map by winning the prestigious Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. Formula 3 followed, but then Mark’s career followed a path pioneered by Michael Schumacher, when he was taken on by the Mercedes sports car team.
Unfortunately, Webber’s time with the tin tops is best remembered for twice flipping the car at huge speed (through no fault of his own) at the Le Mans 24 Hours weekend in 1999. This led to him racing more sensible cars and he ended up coming into Formula One through the more conventional Formula 3000 route.
Mark has spent half his F1 life in Milton Keynes-based teams. His maiden Minardi season was followed by two years with Jaguar. Then after a couple of seasons at Williams, he returned to ‘MK’ and Red Bull Racing. A third placed podium finish in the 2007 European GP has been the highlight of his time with the team to date. In 2008, Mark was Mr Consistency in the first half of the season, regularly bringing home points, but after a front-row start at Silverstone, life got tougher and he ended the year 11th on 21 points.
Apart from his on-track commitment, Mark is a long-standing director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, while the end of his F1 season means just one thing – the Mark Webber Pure Tasmania Challenge, which allows Webber to indulge his passion for all outdoor pursuits, with the possible exceptionof cycling from now on! The event has so far raised more than a million dollars for The Leukaemia Foundation and the Savethe Tasmanian Devil program

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Three: The team’s history!

2009: a new f1 season, new rules and a hostof new challenges! ButforRed Bull Racing, whichthis yearfields anexciting driverline-up inMark Webberand SebastianVettel, thetargetremains thesame: takeontheestablished orderand winthrough! theseasonstarts here!!!

The 2009 season will see Red Bull Racing embark on its fifth year in F1, although its parent company’s links with the sport began a couple of decades earlier. An obvious Austrian connection between Red Bull and Gerhard Berger meant the driver was signed up as Red Bull’s first athlete and, as the drinks company went on to establish a reputation for backing extreme sports, it continued to strengthen its F1 involvement. Its colours graced many a grand prix driver’s drinks bottle and its logo featured on the Sauber team cars. Then, in 2004, Red Bull went one stage further and bought what had been Jaguar Racing and lined up at the start of the 2005 season with David Coulthard and Christian Klien sitting in the cockpits of the team’s RB1 car.

From the outset, the team’s on-track performance was respectable, but what really set Red Bull Racing apart from its peers was the fresh approach it brought to its F1 programme: the Red Bulletin daily paddock newspaper, the Formula Una girls, the Energy Station that played host to the entire paddock and stunning movie co-operations in Monaco. The team has always done things differently.

Red Bull Racing achieved its first podium in Monaco in 2006, which proved to be a transitional year for the team.There was investment in new staff and new equipment, while a key appointment was made in the form of renowned designer Adrian Newey. Wind tunnels and other simulation tools were developed and, as the team worked hard on the RB3, the first car to be designed by Adrian Newey’s technical team, the foundations of the team were firmly established. Later the same year the team confirmed a deal to run Renaultengines that had been good enoughto win back-to-back Championshiptitles in the previous two seasons.
Since 2006 the team has been consistent with a podium finish in 2007 with Mark Webber at the Nurburgring and a further podium finish for David Coulthard in Canada in 2008. This year will see the team fielding a very strong driver line-up, blending the experience of Mark Webber with the youthful talent of Sebastian Vettel. In a sport where money did all the talking, the new rules, which go some way to ruling out the cash advantage of the biggest teams, could well see a shake-up in how the grid lines up. Certainly Red Bull Racing, having just completed another major upgrade of its technical facility at Milton Keynes, is perfectly placed to challenge Formula One’s established order.

2005: The team makes a big impact in its first seasonbeing a regular points scorer and occasionally challenging for podium finishes. In all the team collects 34 Points: 24 for David Coulthard, 9 for Christian Klien and 1 for Vitantonio Liuzzi.
2006: First podium finish, Monaco. David starts from seventh on the grid, but the team makes a strategy change and converts to an early one fuel-stop plan, which moves him into a podium position. The team’s first ever podium thus comes at the world’s most glamorous race and David graces the Royal podium wearing a red cape, as Red Bull have tied in a promo with the Superman returns film over the grand prix weekend.

2006: The team ends the season in seventh position with a haul of 16 points: 14 for DC and 2 for Klien.
2007: Mark Webber joins the team and claims podium No. 2 at the Nurburgring with a great third place in terrible conditions. DC backs up the Aussie with a useful fifth place.
2007: Red Bull Racing ends the ’07 campaign in fifth place with 24 points: 14 for DC and 10 for Webber.
2008: DC claims the last podium finish of his career in Montreal, coming through race day carnage from ‘unlucky 13’ on the grid to finish in third place. Amonth later, Webber claims the team’s first front row start with a brilliant lap in qualifying at the British GP.
2008: Can Red Bull claim to have won a grand prix? Yes it can, because Milton Keynes is also home to the boffins of Red Bull Technology and the car they designed for Scuderia Toro Rosso beat every other car on the grid at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix.
2008: Sebastian Vettel signs for the team for the 2009 season. The team bids farewell to DC as his race career comes to a close in Brazil. Red bull racing ends the season with five more points than the previous season, but the campaign is such an open one that the teamfinishes seventh in the Constructors’ Championship.

Three: The team’s history!