F1 News: Haas Chief Predicts Huge Future Red Bull AlphaTauri Argument
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner predicts that, in the future, Red Bull might have to face an argument on whether it should have two F1 teams, considering the rising demand for places on the grid.
AlphaTauri is Red Bull Racing's sister team since both teams belong to the same owner. The former joined the grid in 2006 after Red Bull GmbH took over the Minardi team. It was known as Toro Rosso until 2019, which is Italian for Red Bull.
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Red Bull Racing arrived on the F1 scene in 2005, after the energy drink company purchased Jaguar Racing from Ford. Steiner, who was the technical operations director with the Milton Keynes outfit in 2005, raised concerns about the organization's double ownership of teams in Formula 1, stating that it could face problems in the future for the same reason.
The Italian-American team boss has always been against the idea of an eleventh team in F1. The FIA however, went against the wish of several team heads to approve Andretti Cadillac an F1 entry.
When Steiner was asked by RaceFans whether it was right for two teams to share the same owner, he said:
“I think, right or not right, it needs to be discussed.
"Obviously, there is a lot of other sports where that is not allowed. But up to now there was not an issue with this.
"Because the sport is becoming more and more popular, [gaining] more and more worth financially, so more and more of these things will come up because everything gets more difficult.
"So this will be for sure an argument which sooner or later will come up."
He sees no problems with the current arrangement of both teams since it has worked for 18 years without any hiccups. But at some stage in the future, questions about dual ownership could be raised. He added:
“It’s [been] 18 years now, so it worked fine up to now.
"But at some stage there will be the questions asked and there will be answers why it works or why it shouldn’t work. But it’s not [worth reacting] on this one because it works a long time.”
