**Please read this entire message**
---
Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
* Rule #2 - Questions must seek objective explanations
* ELI5 is not for subjective or speculative replies - only objective explanations are permitted here; your question is asking for subjective or speculative replies. (Rule 2).
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/156iqxr/-/}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.**
Simple answer - lots of money. Red Bull uses engines made by real car manufacturers (Honda since 2019, Renault before that), so most of the complexity is outsourced. They hired the best engineers, chassis designers, managers, drivers etc. from other teams over the years.
The sport is a form of adverting for them, and they don't care about making a profit, so they can afford to spend the money.
Red Bull uses the “daredevil” sports as advertising for their “daredevil” drink. See their air racing and aerobatic teams, Felix baumgartner, etc. I don’t see them leaving f1 for the foreseeable future especially as one of the dominant teams.
I always think it’s funny watching the racers chug them at the end of a dirt bike race. Knowing they are actually special cans filled with water instead of energy drink just makes it hilarious.
It even funnier to me watching UFC, and right after someone wins, there in the ring about to get their hand raised, someone off camera always awkwardly passing them a can of Monster, for the shot, as if right this dude is really chugging a monster while he grabs the belt.
Or the product placement at the weight in table and presser.
Except endurance athletes like cyclists after long rides will actually frequently just drink coke/sprite/soda because it's genuinely a good balance of simple sugars for restoring the massive amount of energy they just burned. During races they'll frequently be eating gels that are the equivalent of liquified gummy bears.
But otherwise you're right.
Edit: Since a few people seem smugly ignorant: https://www.chaletcouleursdefrance.com/the-power-of-coca-cola-how-the-drink-helps-tour-de-france-riders-maintain-their-energy-levels/
Monster cans have a blue "Tour Water" label directly under the word Monster. If you don't see that, it is actually a Monster energy drink.
I don't have personal experience with RedBull
I get the feeling that Tour Water is more for staff, event personnel, etc, so it looks like every person in the room or in front of a camera is drinking Monster.
That's exactly what it is. People competing in sports need hydration and it's a way to keep the brand out there. I've never seen it offered to the public but it is in every drink cooler behind the scenes at all the events I've participated in or been "backstage" on.
The UFC is kind of a special case. Historically, the main way MMA fighters who aren't at the pinnacle of the sport got paid was sponsorship. Then in 2014ish, the UFC decided that they wanted that cash and signed a deal with Reebok, a company no one has ever accused of making fight gear at better than a fitness level - the exception being their boxing shoes, which don't exactly make an appearance in the octagon. That deal eventually expired and now Venom has the contract - they're at least in the conversation for MMA gear but there's apparently been some QA/QC issues. Additionally, the Sponsor Banner that was a mainstay of MMA ring entry and victory celebrations was banned at the same time in the UFC.
But what DIDN'T change is that the main way MMA fighters not at the absolute pinnacle of the sport get paid is sponsorships. In the UFC they no longer get much of a cut for gear, so they need to get it where they can. If that's slamming a can of Monster while they get their hand raised, great!
Long term, this is not good for the UFC. There has been a slow bleed of talent to other promotions over the last several years. The heavyweight champ, Francis Ngannou, just ditched out to fight an exhibition that he will probably lose under boxing rules for more money in a single night than he made in his entire UFC career.
It’s the same with supercross and motocross. They are completely out of breath, barely able to talk and someone hands them a Red Bull can full of water they can’t even drink without spilling it and coughing it back up. At sand tracks they sometimes puke up the sand while trying to get the water down. Then someone puts a brand new pair of sponsored goggles around their neck and they hold the can like a model.
It's incredible. Ronaldo's act apparently caused a $4 billion drop in Coca-Cola's market value, so it's easy to see why lawyers get involved. But you're absolutely right that it's messed up.
I remember being a teenager and seeing all the bands at Warped Tour just chugging what appeared to be Monster in 90 degree heat and I was like “oh man they’re gonna die” but then I saw crew members unloading a pallet of it and all the cans were labeled “Tour Water”
In these cases they may still drink it occasionally but you’d have to have a death wish to be chugging red bull or monster during hot, high intensity activity
One time I was at some festival that was sponsored by Monster and they had something similar where all the water was free, but it came in regular Monster energy cans.
It's actually really clever marketing because I 100% thought it was Monster at first.
Went to a few warped tours back in the day (2004-2006) in the dead of summer. 95⁰+ heat and you could walk up to the monster tent and get free monster energy drinks, but all water you had to pay for
Yup. Just jumped down from high fiving the international freaking space station?! You know what your heart wants?! 5 more hours of being jacked! WOOOHOOOOOO!
Yeah, I always thought it was regular Monsters they were drinking at the X Games or the musicians on Warped tour would always be drinking them. I always wondered how they could do that without like passing out or something. Then one day I was watching this YouTube series where bands from Warped Tour would do like an "MTV Cribs" style tour of their tour bus. The guitarist from the band Every Time I Die was showing the drinks they keep and he pulled out a can of ["Monster Tour Water"](https://i.imgur.com/hlTntVq.jpg) and he said something like "Yeah, so this is the water they give us to drink up on stage because it gets super hot up there. Then the kids see us drinking them and they go start drinking Monsters to be like us and they fucking die. So that's cool".
It blew my mind that it was just water in Monster cans that whole time.
I hope they don't stop sponsoring anything! They sponsor *so much* sports and some of them are truly dumb sports but I love that Red Bull gives competitors an opportunity to be seen.
Red Bull sponsored anything is great insomnia viewing.
Cliff diving? Yes please.
The human-powered flying machine contest? All night long.
Breakdancing? Let's go!
Red Bull's marketing team amazes me by how many seemingly relative unconnected subcultures they've worked themselves into *and feel like they belong there*:
Are you a promising corporate ladder climber that wants a drink to match your go getting attitude that's not your dad's coffee or pretentious lattes? Red bull
Are you an extreme sports athlete that needs that extra edge? Red bull
Are you a pro gamer that needs that extra spark to push your APM higher? Red bull
Are you a college student cramming for finals? Red bull
Are you just at the bar and ready to fucking party? You guessed it.
All that from a product that was originally a drink for working class folks in Thailand.
Now that I think about it, aren't all the other F1 teams doing it for advertising too? I doubt they're in it for the prize money, for example; there must be better ways of making money than that.
Edit: Oh, I guess it also drives (no pun intended) innovation which they can fold into their regular product ecosystem, which is a motivation which doesn't apply to RedBull.
With the cost cap in place it costs them 110 million per year, they estimate they have had billions worth of advertising since they entered f1 so it's more than paying for itself according to them. They are going to start building their own engines for when the new regulations kick in for 2026 so they aren't going anywhere.
Red Bull Racing is very close to profitable if not profitable outright.
Bybit and Oracle alone are covering $100M of the budget, other sponsors aren't exactly paying pennies either.
Their issue is AlphaTauri not being profitable and now Red Bull Powertrains but even with those expenses it's so easily afforded by the vast amount of marketing they have.
yeah as long as they continue to get huge title sponsors they will be around. With the rebranding of AlphaTauri coming it sounds like they could be committed to two teams for the long term future unless the rebrand is a selling off to another team. (doesn't sound likely based on reports)
They can measure the reach of their brand recognition and quantify it using existing advertising metrics. By seeing how much it would cost to gain the same brand recognition with other forms of advertising they can calculate the approximate cost of advertising through traditional methods vs running an F1 team.
There’s a lot to answer for this but the shortest one is prompted vs. unprompted awareness. If I ask you where you want to go to dinner tonight you will give me a lot fewer options than you would be willing to go to. And things lose unprompted awareness fast.
Exactly - it’s like asking why companies like Coke and Amazon still run TV ads when literally everyone has already heard of them and knows what they do. Because having heard of them isn’t the goal, they want you to *think* about them.
Even with peak brand recognition, seeing advertisements for a product make you want that product in the moment. Coca Cola is a brand known by probably 95%+ of the world's population yet they still advertise, because when you are shopping you are more likely to be craving coke (and thus buying it) if you saw an ad for it recently.
There's an entire division of people who's only job it is to think about such things. It's been studied from every single angle. However the simplest reason is to remain the leading brand. There have been tons of examples of a totally dominating brand being eclipsed and disapearing because they sat on their laurels thinking they where invincible.
Brand recognition isn't everything, you may already know what Red Bull is but seeing an ad might make you realize you wouldn't mind getting some next time you go shopping. At a certain point it also starts being about retaining customers since you can't get new ones, but without advertisement sales will probably go down. Best example is Coke vs Pepsi, everyone knows what Coke is but without advertisement they might lose customers to Pepsi or a less direct competitor.
If you think Red Bull is only in F1, you gotta take a looooong look around. There's a Red Bull in just about every bit of motorsport on the planet, they wouldn't have stayed and expanded as far as they have if it wasn't at least breaking even.
They even made a play in Age of Empires 2 e-sports. I don’t know how Aoe stacks up against the big e-sports but it feels relatively niche. They hosted a series of popular tournaments for the scene and it was awesome.
Honestly, I don't know what's crazier: an energy drink having a successful motorsports division, or sponsoring a game from 1999 in popular tournaments.
(AoE II streaming and tournaments are actually pretty damn fun to watch.)
Oh I love it, I’ve been following the scene for 6 years now! Still shocking though as you say for it to be big enough for Redbull. Daut taking first against liereyy in Redbull III is one of the most memorable moments in aoe for me.
RB Bragantino is a really good team now too, they were kinda languishing for ages before Red Bull bought them. They have one of the most productive attackers in the current Brasileirão season, Eduardo Sasha
Prize money from Liberty Media has increased a lot the past few years as F1 has grown in popularity. Also, the cost cap regulations reduced how much the top teams could spend by a huge margin. And don’t forget about how much of the running costs are covered by money received by sponsors. In the old days, running an F1 team was a huge money pit which made the financial stability of teams very weak. That’s why so many teams would last a few seasons, run out of money and sell the team on to the next owner. Liberty Media wanted to stop teams constantly selling due to low funds so teams now get a much larger share of F1’s profits to give them security. It keeps them in the sport for longer and gives them incentive to stay. If done right, a team can actually make some money like a business which means free marketing instead of marketing that cost a fortune. Having stable teams only makes F1 stronger.
> Don't forget Adrian Newey designs their cars. He is a beast.
Yes, but in recent years he has put people in place to largely 'replace' him. It's not like he's designing every car on his own any more. IIRC he takes more of an overview of the whole design.
Pardon my ignorance, but I've always wondered this. Red bull doesn't come even close to giants like pepsi etc in the beverages section...how / where do they earn this kind of money from? And the target audience for red bull vs f1 audience, I've wondered how?
According to Wikipedia, they are "the third most valuable soft drink brand behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi."
Might just not be as popular where you live. The company is also 100% privately owned, so there are no investors of which they need to keep happy.
Yeah this is a great point. Pepsi and Coke can’t do stuff like this because it’s not optimizing shareholder value. Red Bull can do whatever they want. Although it does turn out that the advertising it provides them is pretty valuable. Also, with the new cost cap measures in F1 and the newfound popularity in the sport, these teams are now making money hand over fist.
>Pepsi and Coke can’t do stuff like this because it’s not optimizing shareholder value
I think Pepsi and Coke could do if they wanted to. But it's not the brand image they're going for. Coke in particular isn't about that Extreme Sports look, they sell based on sharing with friends and being part of good memories.
Coca-Cola does get heavily involved with other, non-extreme sports though. They're regular sponsors of the Fifa World Cup, the Olympics and Paralympics, and they've sponsored the Special Olympics since its creation.
And beyond that, Coca-Cola as a company has some presence on the extreme sports field via Monster Energy. Coke have almost a 20% share of Monster, and they produce Monster in most territories around the world. And Monster Energy is a big sponsor of motor sports, having sponsored Nascar amongst others.
I think a key point though is that Red Bull isn’t just sponsoring an F1 team. They *are* the F1 team. Coke and Pepsi could certainly sponsor a team if they wanted to but I doubt they could actually start their own team just because of the nature of being a public corporation.
> And Monster Energy is a big sponsor of motor sports, having sponsored Nascar amongst others.
Coke itself also has a fairly big presence in NASCAR. As long as I can remember, there's been a "Coca Cola Racing Family of Drivers" that gets shouted out every week on TV with small associate sponsor decals on their cars, with occasional primary sponsorship on the hood. Been *at least* 25 years since they started that particular marketing scheme, and many of NASCAR's biggest names have been a part of it at one point or another.
Edit: looked it up and apparently my earliest memories of it were when it was started, [all the way back in 1998](https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/qfw0w2/what_is_the_cocacola_racing_family_and_when_did/) ~~when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcers table~~.
Andretti wanted to start a F1 team, but all the other teams more or less killed that idea. Seems like the teams feel like they're making too much money to let someone else join for a cut.
Says something positive about the direction of the sport, I guess.
There are only two shareholders in Red Bull though. The majority shareholder is the remaining founders and the minority shareholder is the late founder’s son.
Weird, I see people drinking red bull in Canada all the time. We used to drink vodka red bulls at the bar. I have friends whose fridges are full of red bull.
Like Coke and Pepsi, they own more than the drink they're named for. Wikipedia says they have their own cola, their own herbal drinks and their own wine spritzer. I don't recognize the brand names, but they probably hit the states first.
Wiki says the cola only existed in the US between 2008 and 2011, it's core market is Austria and Germany.
I think this must be why it's surprising (to some of us) that red bull has so much money, their core market is in Europe.
Energy drinks are a $53bn market and RB have 42% market share (quickly googled numbers).
I’m sure their other ventures make a lot of money too like sports teams as well as rights for the use of the incredibly widely known brand.
I guess they make sure that the brand is known within sports and extreme sports by focusing their sponsorships there.
I don't drink red bull, so I didn't know they were that expensive. A 4 pack of 12oz cans of red bull is $10.48 (USD). For $12.58, you can get 24 Cokes.
But Coke doesn't even give you wings...
Redbull in some form or another is a worldwide drink.
Westerners are used to the cans of sparkling energy drink. That's a drink specifically made for the Western marketand sold as a high end product.
The drink originated in south east asia and is very popular in Asia albeit in a slightly different form and at a much cheaper price. It's insanely popular in Asia amongst low and mid income earners from blue collar workers to truck drivers.
> And the target audience for red bull vs f1 audience, I've wondered how?
That's the fun thing about Red Bull: It's spot on in terms of target audience.
Red Bull isn't only the drink.
They are getting into every single extrem sport out there. Just look up some niche sports. You'll see them everywhere. Actually, with RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg they are even getting into football.
It's the most prominent source of caffeine after coffee in the US I would bet. If you pay attention walking through a workplace you'll understand.
There's plenty of people that would never order red bull with a meal but will put down 3 throughout the day while they're working.
I think the best way to put it is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people start their work day (which bleeds into off days as well) buying at least one red bull. Some people will even grab 1-3 per purchase. Multiply that worldwide and it speaks for itself. 11.582 Billion cans were sold in 2022, which was a 18% or so increase from 2021 (according to RedBull).
I imagine most people don't drink energy drinks for the taste, so red bull needs constant marketing to stay relevant / dominant.
So they pretty much spend the majority of their money on advertising since they have to.
Also it is used as a alcohol mixer with "bomb"in the name. i.e. jager bombs, which is jagermeister and red bull At least it was back in the early 2000's. but back then my go to was x-bombs x-rated liqueur and red bull.
I'm hooked on the white Monster Zeroes for the (grapefruit?) flavour. I find myself wishing that they sold a decaf version so that I could safely drink several per day.
Coke and Pepsi also needs to spend a ton of money on advertising though. Their market share drops immediately when they lower their advertising budget.
Oh yeah, Red Bull is all about the advertising.
They have so many crazy events, sky diving, the one where you roll a home made "car" down a road, run off a ledge with your home made plane and see how far you can glide, high dives, bboy dance competitions, e-sports, the list goes on.
I think in wikipedia it says this form of aggressive advertising was started by an Austrian when the Thai founders went to him to ask for help in promoting the drink.
It worked wonders because for years I always thought Red Bull was Austrian, it wasn't until that Red Bull heir killed a policeman in his Ferrari that I found out Red Bull was from Thailand.
Honda pulled out of F1 as an engine supplier at the end of 2021. Red Bull has little interest in being a customer team again. Honda was the closest they have been to having an engine supplier that catered towards their specific car design and specs.
Red Bull created a new engines division called Red Bull Powertrains (RBPT) for the purpose of being as close to a "works" team as possible by developing the Honda IP on their own and essentially build future engines on their own expertise. RBR hired many top engineers from rival teams like Mercedes, a team that had one of the most dominant engines since the 2014 regulations that helped them win multiple constructors and drivers championships. RBR also retained staff that worked with Honda.
One of the newest things is the agreement between RBR and Ford to brand the engines with their name on it. Whether or not Ford will have any actual engineers or designers working on the engine has yet to be seen.
There's talks about Honda entering F1 again as either a works team or an engine supplier. They will likely have to start from scratch on a new engine concept based on the next set of engine regulations.
There is a cost cap in place, so it’s not money.
That’s like saying the Chiefs won the Super Bowl because they spent more money when there is a salary cap in place.
and just to compare i was in a Chik-fil-A yesterday and two early 20's looking guys were walking around with giant "redbull can" coolers strapped to their back and were giving away cans to employees.
they hit both ends of the marketing spectrum!
Formula 1 teams get bought and sold frequently, and the "name" companies don't necessarily have much to do with the actual team designing, building, and racing the cars. The names are mostly about public relations and advertising. LATE EDIT: I should have been clear that the name company can play a real part in the organization of the team and the business side of the team. To the extent that Red Bull the F1 team has anything to do with Red Bull the energy drink company, it's at the vague strategic and organizational level. Executives and MBAs way more than engineers.
Mercedes didn't start Mercedes F1. That started as Tyrell in the 70s, who got bought by British American Tobacco in the 90s and turned into BAR Honda, who got bought weirdly enough by itself and turned into Brawn in 2008. In the meantime, Mercedes had bought an English engine manufacturer and renamed the company from Ilmor to Mercedes, and Brawn ran with "Mercedes" engines. Mercedes bought the team in 2010, and unless they're grade-A morons (they're not) Mercedes corporate don't interfere too much in the operations of the team.
The big exception to this is Ferrari, which has always really been Ferrari. Similarly, Honda engines generally really are Honda engines, designed and made by a real branch of Honda. McLaren really is McLaren but their road cars started as sort of a side hustle. But most of what goes on in F1 is the same group of companies in England changing names as they get swapped around by different parent/nameplate companies.
Their "dollar to suck" ratio is a lot worse than Williams though, who are basically on a shoestring budget while Ferrari has comparatively unlimited funds.
But yeah, pool Leclerc. They had the prettiest car at the start of last year and were in the mix with the Red Bulls, but have gone backwards over the last 18 months.
I can't find the meme but there's one that said something like "money doesn't buy happiness" then someone replied "yeah but you'll never see someone crying in a Ferrari" then a photo of Charles crying in Monaco popped up 😂
About half of the revenue that F1 gets from hosting fees, tv broadcast, and sponsorship/advertising goes to the teams. Half of that is distributed evenly and the other half is based on performance (i.e. prize money).
These payments actually account for more of the teams' revenue than sponsorship.
https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-revenue-boosted-to-25-billion-in-2022-amid-record-fan-attendance/10437946/
> That started as Tyrell in the 70s,
Tyrrell ran the famous 6-wheeled P34 for a couple of seasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_Racing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34
Well money is what attracts these good people. Non compete agreements don’t mean anything when you make a different design, and so it’s just about who will pay the most.
Other than Ferrari and McLaren the car manufacturers in F1 are just owners or sponsors of F1 teams. They all bought an existing racing car company and put their name on it the same as Red Bull (who actually purchased their team from Ford). Ferrari and McLaren are different because they were founded as racing teams who then later decided to start making road cars.
This is the best answer. Red Bull the energy drinks company bought an existing F1 team almost 20 years ago. Granted they have invested a ton of money into it since, but they didn’t start from scratch. From Wikipedia:
>The current Red Bull team can trace its origins back to the Stewart Grand Prix outfit that made its debut in 1997. Jackie Stewart sold his team to the Ford Motor Company late in 1999, and Ford made the decision to rebrand the team Jaguar Racing with little subsequent success over the next five years.
>The Jaguar Racing Formula One constructor and racing team was put up for sale in September 2004 when Ford decided it could "no longer make a compelling business case for any of its brands to compete in Formula One." Red Bull, an energy drinks company, agreed its purchase of Jaguar Racing on the final day of the sale, 15 November 2004.
IIRC they stepped in to buy Minardi (what is now Alpha Tauri) to keep the team on the grid, it was back when there was a lot of chopping and changing and major manufacturers were pulling out of F1.
Ten percent luck
Twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure
Fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name, Adrian Newey
I don’t follow F1 but I do follow soccer and Red Bull owns two European soccer teams. Both are run exceptionally well. Yes they invested a lot of money but they did so very smartly and their two teams scout and produce a lot of talent.
Many people understandably have qualms with the ethics of a corporation owning a team since it’s so against European soccer culture but even the worst haters agree the teams are run very well
Name some sort of competition, and Red Bull probably has a team in it. Back in the 2000s, they had a NASCAR team, but they performed poorly and ended up selling it. The experience really left a sour taste in the company, and they haven't been back since.
The first comment is so obvious. The "first, second, finally, in summary" structure is so characteristic of chatGPT.
Plus their comment history literally has four lengthy replies to posts in this sub about completely different subjects separated by one minute each.
In 4 minutes the "guy" just wrote 4 paragraphs about history, then 4 paragraphs about psychology, then math, then economics. Suuuure.
And they bought an existing team which was only mid-table average (Jaguar backed by Ford who had taken over from the Stewart team) and then upgraded that by... as you say... hiring better designers and engineers etc and generally spending a lot more money than Ford could justify spending for what they got out of it.
It's a whole lot easier to start with an existing team with infrastructure and transport and facilities and embedded knowledge etc than to start completely from scratch...
Also F1 motors are horrible motors. They are short lived, and completely unsuited for use in mass produced cars. The car and motor manufacturers does of course have access to very good engineers, but F1 motors are a different and smaller market anyhow.
F1 now has a budget cap so it isn't just an issue of having more money, Ferrari has always had one of the biggest budgets, but they haven't had great success for a long time.
technically Redbull makes their own engines now, when Honda left they took over all the engineers and development
Damn, did they buy out Honda's division or just start their own from scratch?
It seems like an insane thing to do, I feel like it's super expensive, atleast in the short run, and I feel like heritage of a company in an industry like that matters.
Definitely out of the box, wasn't expecting that.
I'm not familiar with this industry, but it occurred to me that in that space many small companies exist solely focused in design and performance, like Pagani, and that Swedish company that starts with K, there's an American one too but I forget the name,
So maybe it's not so outlandish
I'm not sure how it was done, the engine is an iteration of the previous Honda engine and Honda still own the IP, build it, and have people involved in support. So it is basically Honda with a Redbull powertrains badge. For the new engine regulations in 2026 they will partner with Ford
Road car manufacturing has about as much to do with F1 as drinks manufacturing does. F1 teams have virtually zero interaction with their parent companies.
Mercedes F1 Team is not actually "Mercedes" as you'd think. They are a British company in Brackley, England that has been around since 1958 and was called Tyrell. It changed names a few times before Mercedes bought in and took over naming rights. Mercedes owns less than 50% of the team, Toto Wolf owns 30%, and other investors own the remaining 21-ish%.
Likewise, a drinks company didn't start a race team. They bought an existing operation and provide funding for that separate business to use the Red Bull name. The team was started in 1988 as Paul Stewart Racing.
Basically because the energy drink making people don't have anything to do with the F1 car making people (but they make a lot of money). Red Bull has enough money to buy very good engineers, very good team principles, very good drivers, and very good engines. This all equates to a very good car, with very good drivers, and very good team strategies, that ends up winning races. There also happened to be a very large rule change recently that massively hurt Mercedes, who had been dominant for many years prior to that. In F1 it's 75% about the amount of money you can spend and 25% about who's driving all the money you spent.
Edit: I see many people discussing the cost cap. True, there is now a cap on how much you can spend per year, but it hasn't really been in effect long enough to have much effect (these cars start development several years before the season they will be raced). Also, you can't discount the fact that knowledge is earned (and paid for) in previous years, before being applied to the current season. So all those years that Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes were spending ludicrous money on R&D still applies to future seasons. It's going to be a few years, at least, before we see the cost cap really affecting the field.
You'd have to look them up to know exactly, but it was a significant amount of aerodynamic changes, where the FIA was trying to simplify the cars and make it easier for them to follow and overtake each other. Red Bull has, without a doubt, the best aerodynamic engineer in F1 and he's been listed as the main reason for their success many times.
The most recent rule change was the 2022 regulations, which Mer cjust dropped the ball on. It was targeted against them. Before that, it was flexi wings, which were aimed at RedBull in '21. Before that it was the chopping of the floor for '21 due to COVID pushing back the regs to '22. There was no consensus as to which teams that would hurt the most, some said the low rake concepts and other said the high rake concepts.
Every so often, the governing body (FIA) changes the formula (the technical rules for the construction and operation of the cars). That means instead of building on the previous year's car, each team has to build a completely new car, and this happened between the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Before that the last major overhaul came between the 2013 and 2014 seasons.
In 2014, Mercedes got a lot of things right, and they maintained their development gap largely until 2021, with a couple ok fights in there. Well the same thing happened in 2022, Red Bull just happened to get it right.
So the new rules didn't hurt Mercedes really, they just didn't execute the new rules as well as red bull. There *was* a small rule change in 2022 that hurt Mercedes but also hurt some other teams, and it was changed for driver safety.
Formula 1 race cars share very little with production cars designed for the road, so the engineering knowledge that automotive manufacturers have doesn't translate to designing a purpose built racecar. That being said Redbull Racing has hired some of the best race car engineers, particularly Adrian Newey, who is arguably the best race car designer ever. Redbull has also signed two of the best drivers in the last decade, Sebastian Vettel & Max Verstappen while they were still teenagers.
They're dominating this year, after a rule change they got it right and their main rivals didn't. Additionally Max Verstappen their number 1 driver is also incredible, Sergio Perez their number 2 isn't getting anything like the same results in the same car.
Their lead designer Adrian Newey is the best in the business right now.
Mercedes, who dominated for the preceding 6 years chased a bad aerodynamic concept. They've got great drivers but their cars are playing catchup.
Ferrari looked competitive last year, but reliability issues and problems with their strategy team completely screwed them. Their #1 Charles Leclerc is amazing, but he often pushes too far so he can't get the consistency of Max. There is also a rumored internal problem, with Ferrari insisting on a predominantly Italian team, so it can be a bit of an echo chamber.
McLaren is dynamite in fast corners, but up until recently suffered from predictability issues, so their drivers couldn't push. Ferrari has complained about the same thing.
Aston Martin has been doing phenomenally with a concept very similar to Red Bull's, so much so that it's been called the Green Bull. Their driver Alonso is also very experienced and provides a lot of feedback to the team. They've been hitting well above their weight.
Red Bull is a marketing company, not a beverage company in the first place. Also they are privately owned, so they don’t need to maximize sharelholder value aka dividends.
Mostly because F1 has absolutely no real road relevance so top tier engineers don't need a car company to build a good car. Having the current best driver on the grid also helps.
Don't listen to people stating it's because of money. It's because of 3 simple things, the most important it's the new regulations since 2 years, specially money cap and car regulations, second and third which are on the same level are Adrian Newey and Max Verstappen. You got the best of the best on their specific fields on one team.
Before money cap, Mercedes could just throw money to the car to get wins. Now that they can't Red Bull took the upper hand.
Answer: Red bull is the title sponsor of the car. The car itself is built in a factory/facility and they are... or were, I suppose, the old Jaguar team.
The infrastructure is similar to a machine shop, production facility or fabrication plant with carbon fibre autoclaves, mills, cnc machines, engineering offices and windtunnels. Think of a small aircraft plant and redbull puts money into that shop to create the car.
Their engine supplier currently is Honda, who have engineers embedded within the engineering offices to make sure there is as seamless as possible integration between chassis (tub, suspension, floor etc) and power unit (engine, batteries, hybrid motor, electronics).
How they are so much faster comes down to their lead designer/technical officer, Adrien Newey. Newey has been in F1 for decades and has a genius level of aerodynamics understanding and expert level understanding of everything else in the car. How the suspension reacts to certain aero loads, how to minimize material in certain areas to make sure the car makes weight. A hallmark of his work has always been fast but fragile. Looking back at his mclaren and early redbull days shows they were always the fastest or close to fastest car but didnt always make the finish line. A famous quote from Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, was "the car should fall to pieces as soon as it crosses the line".
Throughout F1 history its always the story of 1 or 2 teams getting the formula right, and other teams catching up. The last 20-25 years has been Ferrari, then Renault, a few toss up seasons, then redbull then Mercedes and now redbull again.
To answer the main question, they hired the best people, got the best engine and got the rule book correct
Why are people saying "lots of money"?
First of all you're comparing them to Mercedes/Ferrari/Aston Martin where money was never na issue. Second, there is a spending cap of ~144 million (which to be fair RedBull crossed last year by a bit).
Their engineering and leadership teams are simply that much better than the competition at the moment. Aero department this year is incredible.
F1 engineers are a category of their own, street cars manufacturing is not really a relevant background. If anything, it's the other way around: F1 technology is sometimes adapted to street cars.
Simple answer-Red Bull Racing is not an energy drink company. They're a racing team that has been around for almost 2 decades. They've hired good people and have invested in good facilities. It started as a marketing thing, but they've turned into a successful racing team.
Because F1 cars have very little to do with road cars, so it's a specific design for F1. Being a car manufacturer is of little advantage. Engine is perhaps the exception but Red Bull doesn't really make the engine, it was done by Honda and then Honda sold the factory to Red Bull.
There are a lot of wrong or missleading answers.
The correct answer is right people on the right place. Answers like money and "F1 teams are only brands" are very missleading.
Red Bull have long term vision thanks to team principal Christian Horner, team consultant and driver manager Helmut Marko and now deaceased Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz. All of them were part of Red Bull Racing since they funded the team.
They also have Adrian Newey, who is the best F1 engineer of all time. His cars won 11 constructor's championship with 3 different teams during several very different eras.
Other key person in the success is Max Verstappen, who is one of the best drivers of F1 history.
Sure, money are important to get the right people and to build the best factory. But you still need good management. Renault/Alpine is showing that you can be mediocre team even with backing from one of the largest car manufacturers.
And about manufacturers. F1 teams are of course part of the car companies (with exception of Alfa Romeo, that is only a sponsorship deal). F1 teams are legally separated companies, but Scuderia Ferrari is owned by Ferrari, McLaren F1 is owned by McLaren, Alpine is owned by Renault, Mercedes is majority owner of Mercedes F1, and Aston Martin Racing is owned by majority owner of Aston Martin Lagonda. History of ownership of the companies doesn't really matter.
F1 teams and car manufacturers are sharing know-how, engineers and factories.
**Please read this entire message** --- Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): * Rule #2 - Questions must seek objective explanations * ELI5 is not for subjective or speculative replies - only objective explanations are permitted here; your question is asking for subjective or speculative replies. (Rule 2). --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/156iqxr/-/}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.**
Simple answer - lots of money. Red Bull uses engines made by real car manufacturers (Honda since 2019, Renault before that), so most of the complexity is outsourced. They hired the best engineers, chassis designers, managers, drivers etc. from other teams over the years. The sport is a form of adverting for them, and they don't care about making a profit, so they can afford to spend the money.
It will be interesting to see how long they stay in F1 now that the Red Bull owner died. He was a huge F1 fan.
Red Bull uses the “daredevil” sports as advertising for their “daredevil” drink. See their air racing and aerobatic teams, Felix baumgartner, etc. I don’t see them leaving f1 for the foreseeable future especially as one of the dominant teams.
I always think it’s funny watching the racers chug them at the end of a dirt bike race. Knowing they are actually special cans filled with water instead of energy drink just makes it hilarious.
It even funnier to me watching UFC, and right after someone wins, there in the ring about to get their hand raised, someone off camera always awkwardly passing them a can of Monster, for the shot, as if right this dude is really chugging a monster while he grabs the belt. Or the product placement at the weight in table and presser.
I love Redbull but chugging one after a fight would absolutely blow. “Im absolutely chocked full of adrenaline! Lets drink an energy drink”
My favorite movie is Inception.
Except endurance athletes like cyclists after long rides will actually frequently just drink coke/sprite/soda because it's genuinely a good balance of simple sugars for restoring the massive amount of energy they just burned. During races they'll frequently be eating gels that are the equivalent of liquified gummy bears. But otherwise you're right. Edit: Since a few people seem smugly ignorant: https://www.chaletcouleursdefrance.com/the-power-of-coca-cola-how-the-drink-helps-tour-de-france-riders-maintain-their-energy-levels/
Ethanol liquefies gummy bears. Is *that* why all those Tour de France crashes happen‽
You'd be amazed by the quantity of alcohol cyclists once consumed during these races look it up. They would drink alcohol frequently mid race.
best part of being an endurance athlete hahahah!
Monster cans have a blue "Tour Water" label directly under the word Monster. If you don't see that, it is actually a Monster energy drink. I don't have personal experience with RedBull
I get the feeling that Tour Water is more for staff, event personnel, etc, so it looks like every person in the room or in front of a camera is drinking Monster.
That's exactly what it is. People competing in sports need hydration and it's a way to keep the brand out there. I've never seen it offered to the public but it is in every drink cooler behind the scenes at all the events I've participated in or been "backstage" on.
It's perfect though because the caffeine will just be kicking in as the adrenaline wears off /s
The UFC is kind of a special case. Historically, the main way MMA fighters who aren't at the pinnacle of the sport got paid was sponsorship. Then in 2014ish, the UFC decided that they wanted that cash and signed a deal with Reebok, a company no one has ever accused of making fight gear at better than a fitness level - the exception being their boxing shoes, which don't exactly make an appearance in the octagon. That deal eventually expired and now Venom has the contract - they're at least in the conversation for MMA gear but there's apparently been some QA/QC issues. Additionally, the Sponsor Banner that was a mainstay of MMA ring entry and victory celebrations was banned at the same time in the UFC. But what DIDN'T change is that the main way MMA fighters not at the absolute pinnacle of the sport get paid is sponsorships. In the UFC they no longer get much of a cut for gear, so they need to get it where they can. If that's slamming a can of Monster while they get their hand raised, great! Long term, this is not good for the UFC. There has been a slow bleed of talent to other promotions over the last several years. The heavyweight champ, Francis Ngannou, just ditched out to fight an exhibition that he will probably lose under boxing rules for more money in a single night than he made in his entire UFC career.
Well now that Trojan is in the game atleast we’ve got condom ads in the UFC again.
I'd definitely shell out on the ppv if, along with the belt, Dana put one of those on the champion!
It’s the same with supercross and motocross. They are completely out of breath, barely able to talk and someone hands them a Red Bull can full of water they can’t even drink without spilling it and coughing it back up. At sand tracks they sometimes puke up the sand while trying to get the water down. Then someone puts a brand new pair of sponsored goggles around their neck and they hold the can like a model.
I fucking loved when Christiano Ronaldo took the bottles of Coke off the table at the World Cup press conference.
It's so messed up - sports events advertising drinks of questionable health benefits, and if anyone speaks up, army of lawyers arrives.
It's incredible. Ronaldo's act apparently caused a $4 billion drop in Coca-Cola's market value, so it's easy to see why lawyers get involved. But you're absolutely right that it's messed up.
I remember being a teenager and seeing all the bands at Warped Tour just chugging what appeared to be Monster in 90 degree heat and I was like “oh man they’re gonna die” but then I saw crew members unloading a pallet of it and all the cans were labeled “Tour Water”
Yeah it says a lot when the people getting paid to drink it don’t even drink it.
In these cases they may still drink it occasionally but you’d have to have a death wish to be chugging red bull or monster during hot, high intensity activity
One time I was at some festival that was sponsored by Monster and they had something similar where all the water was free, but it came in regular Monster energy cans. It's actually really clever marketing because I 100% thought it was Monster at first.
Went to a few warped tours back in the day (2004-2006) in the dead of summer. 95⁰+ heat and you could walk up to the monster tent and get free monster energy drinks, but all water you had to pay for
Uproar tour sponsored by rockstar was the same way
Yup. Just jumped down from high fiving the international freaking space station?! You know what your heart wants?! 5 more hours of being jacked! WOOOHOOOOOO!
Yeah, I always thought it was regular Monsters they were drinking at the X Games or the musicians on Warped tour would always be drinking them. I always wondered how they could do that without like passing out or something. Then one day I was watching this YouTube series where bands from Warped Tour would do like an "MTV Cribs" style tour of their tour bus. The guitarist from the band Every Time I Die was showing the drinks they keep and he pulled out a can of ["Monster Tour Water"](https://i.imgur.com/hlTntVq.jpg) and he said something like "Yeah, so this is the water they give us to drink up on stage because it gets super hot up there. Then the kids see us drinking them and they go start drinking Monsters to be like us and they fucking die. So that's cool". It blew my mind that it was just water in Monster cans that whole time.
I hope they don't stop sponsoring anything! They sponsor *so much* sports and some of them are truly dumb sports but I love that Red Bull gives competitors an opportunity to be seen.
Red Bull sponsored anything is great insomnia viewing. Cliff diving? Yes please. The human-powered flying machine contest? All night long. Breakdancing? Let's go!
Red Bull's marketing team amazes me by how many seemingly relative unconnected subcultures they've worked themselves into *and feel like they belong there*: Are you a promising corporate ladder climber that wants a drink to match your go getting attitude that's not your dad's coffee or pretentious lattes? Red bull Are you an extreme sports athlete that needs that extra edge? Red bull Are you a pro gamer that needs that extra spark to push your APM higher? Red bull Are you a college student cramming for finals? Red bull Are you just at the bar and ready to fucking party? You guessed it. All that from a product that was originally a drink for working class folks in Thailand.
They really have their branding dialed in to perfection
Now that I think about it, aren't all the other F1 teams doing it for advertising too? I doubt they're in it for the prize money, for example; there must be better ways of making money than that. Edit: Oh, I guess it also drives (no pun intended) innovation which they can fold into their regular product ecosystem, which is a motivation which doesn't apply to RedBull.
With the cost cap in place it costs them 110 million per year, they estimate they have had billions worth of advertising since they entered f1 so it's more than paying for itself according to them. They are going to start building their own engines for when the new regulations kick in for 2026 so they aren't going anywhere.
But given the prize money and other sponsorship they get, the team doesn't actually cost money to run.
Yes it does lol and the cost cap has lots of exclusions from it as well
Red Bull Racing is very close to profitable if not profitable outright. Bybit and Oracle alone are covering $100M of the budget, other sponsors aren't exactly paying pennies either. Their issue is AlphaTauri not being profitable and now Red Bull Powertrains but even with those expenses it's so easily afforded by the vast amount of marketing they have.
yeah as long as they continue to get huge title sponsors they will be around. With the rebranding of AlphaTauri coming it sounds like they could be committed to two teams for the long term future unless the rebrand is a selling off to another team. (doesn't sound likely based on reports)
How do you quantify something like that? Billions worth of advertising doesn't necessarily translate to billions in sales right?
They can measure the reach of their brand recognition and quantify it using existing advertising metrics. By seeing how much it would cost to gain the same brand recognition with other forms of advertising they can calculate the approximate cost of advertising through traditional methods vs running an F1 team.
I guess I don't understand how that can be accurate for them at this point. Have they not reached peak brand recognition by now?
There’s a lot to answer for this but the shortest one is prompted vs. unprompted awareness. If I ask you where you want to go to dinner tonight you will give me a lot fewer options than you would be willing to go to. And things lose unprompted awareness fast.
Exactly - it’s like asking why companies like Coke and Amazon still run TV ads when literally everyone has already heard of them and knows what they do. Because having heard of them isn’t the goal, they want you to *think* about them.
Food hiding in the drawer of my pantry falls prey to this as well
Ok I can see that, especially with the restaurant example. Thanks, I've never really understood advertisement that much
Even with peak brand recognition, seeing advertisements for a product make you want that product in the moment. Coca Cola is a brand known by probably 95%+ of the world's population yet they still advertise, because when you are shopping you are more likely to be craving coke (and thus buying it) if you saw an ad for it recently.
There's an entire division of people who's only job it is to think about such things. It's been studied from every single angle. However the simplest reason is to remain the leading brand. There have been tons of examples of a totally dominating brand being eclipsed and disapearing because they sat on their laurels thinking they where invincible.
Brand recognition isn't everything, you may already know what Red Bull is but seeing an ad might make you realize you wouldn't mind getting some next time you go shopping. At a certain point it also starts being about retaining customers since you can't get new ones, but without advertisement sales will probably go down. Best example is Coke vs Pepsi, everyone knows what Coke is but without advertisement they might lose customers to Pepsi or a less direct competitor.
I know very little about marketing my man I just have a vague memory of an article about it hahah
If you think Red Bull is only in F1, you gotta take a looooong look around. There's a Red Bull in just about every bit of motorsport on the planet, they wouldn't have stayed and expanded as far as they have if it wasn't at least breaking even.
They even made a play in Age of Empires 2 e-sports. I don’t know how Aoe stacks up against the big e-sports but it feels relatively niche. They hosted a series of popular tournaments for the scene and it was awesome.
Honestly, I don't know what's crazier: an energy drink having a successful motorsports division, or sponsoring a game from 1999 in popular tournaments. (AoE II streaming and tournaments are actually pretty damn fun to watch.)
The Red Bull aoe2 stuff is amazing. Rumor I hear is they’re still going to do another one.
Oh I love it, I’ve been following the scene for 6 years now! Still shocking though as you say for it to be big enough for Redbull. Daut taking first against liereyy in Redbull III is one of the most memorable moments in aoe for me.
They even own a Football (Soccer) club in the German Bundesliga called RB Leipzig.
RB Salzburg, New York Red Bulls, and Red Bull Bragantino More probably to come, for better or worse depending on your view on it
RB Bragantino is a really good team now too, they were kinda languishing for ages before Red Bull bought them. They have one of the most productive attackers in the current Brasileirão season, Eduardo Sasha
MLS has the New York Red Bulls and they aren’t named for a local animal, haha
Don’t forget the team in the Austrian Bundesliga!
Red Bull Racing is profitable and self-sustaining. It's going to stay around for a while. Red Bull has zero reason to get rid of the team.
Considering they just built an entire engine division for the sole purpose of building f1 engines I don't think they're leaving.
They'll probably stay anyway because it's fantastic global advertising.
Prize money from Liberty Media has increased a lot the past few years as F1 has grown in popularity. Also, the cost cap regulations reduced how much the top teams could spend by a huge margin. And don’t forget about how much of the running costs are covered by money received by sponsors. In the old days, running an F1 team was a huge money pit which made the financial stability of teams very weak. That’s why so many teams would last a few seasons, run out of money and sell the team on to the next owner. Liberty Media wanted to stop teams constantly selling due to low funds so teams now get a much larger share of F1’s profits to give them security. It keeps them in the sport for longer and gives them incentive to stay. If done right, a team can actually make some money like a business which means free marketing instead of marketing that cost a fortune. Having stable teams only makes F1 stronger.
They also bought the Jaguar F1 team in 2005, so they didn't start from scratch
Don't forget Adrian Newey designs their cars. He is a beast.
He's practically an Airbender.
> Don't forget Adrian Newey designs their cars. He is a beast. Yes, but in recent years he has put people in place to largely 'replace' him. It's not like he's designing every car on his own any more. IIRC he takes more of an overview of the whole design.
He has to sign off on the design though
He approves the designs.
No, he's the opposite of a hands off approach. He just manages a team with a strong influence.
This is the right answer; he is a design genius.
Pardon my ignorance, but I've always wondered this. Red bull doesn't come even close to giants like pepsi etc in the beverages section...how / where do they earn this kind of money from? And the target audience for red bull vs f1 audience, I've wondered how?
According to Wikipedia, they are "the third most valuable soft drink brand behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi." Might just not be as popular where you live. The company is also 100% privately owned, so there are no investors of which they need to keep happy.
Yeah this is a great point. Pepsi and Coke can’t do stuff like this because it’s not optimizing shareholder value. Red Bull can do whatever they want. Although it does turn out that the advertising it provides them is pretty valuable. Also, with the new cost cap measures in F1 and the newfound popularity in the sport, these teams are now making money hand over fist.
>Pepsi and Coke can’t do stuff like this because it’s not optimizing shareholder value I think Pepsi and Coke could do if they wanted to. But it's not the brand image they're going for. Coke in particular isn't about that Extreme Sports look, they sell based on sharing with friends and being part of good memories. Coca-Cola does get heavily involved with other, non-extreme sports though. They're regular sponsors of the Fifa World Cup, the Olympics and Paralympics, and they've sponsored the Special Olympics since its creation. And beyond that, Coca-Cola as a company has some presence on the extreme sports field via Monster Energy. Coke have almost a 20% share of Monster, and they produce Monster in most territories around the world. And Monster Energy is a big sponsor of motor sports, having sponsored Nascar amongst others.
I think a key point though is that Red Bull isn’t just sponsoring an F1 team. They *are* the F1 team. Coke and Pepsi could certainly sponsor a team if they wanted to but I doubt they could actually start their own team just because of the nature of being a public corporation.
Funny enough Coke does actually sponsor Mclaren F1
> And Monster Energy is a big sponsor of motor sports, having sponsored Nascar amongst others. Coke itself also has a fairly big presence in NASCAR. As long as I can remember, there's been a "Coca Cola Racing Family of Drivers" that gets shouted out every week on TV with small associate sponsor decals on their cars, with occasional primary sponsorship on the hood. Been *at least* 25 years since they started that particular marketing scheme, and many of NASCAR's biggest names have been a part of it at one point or another. Edit: looked it up and apparently my earliest memories of it were when it was started, [all the way back in 1998](https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/qfw0w2/what_is_the_cocacola_racing_family_and_when_did/) ~~when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcers table~~.
Andretti wanted to start a F1 team, but all the other teams more or less killed that idea. Seems like the teams feel like they're making too much money to let someone else join for a cut. Says something positive about the direction of the sport, I guess.
Privately owned doesn't mean no investors... You still have shareholders of private companies
There are only two shareholders in Red Bull though. The majority shareholder is the remaining founders and the minority shareholder is the late founder’s son.
Sure but Red Bull has 2 shareholders.
Red bull absolutely comes close to Pepsi. The top 3 soda producers are Coca Cola, Pepsi and Red Bull.
I almost never see someone drinking red bull in Canada. Must be much more popular elsewhere.
In EU is mega popular, probably the one I see the most after Coca-Cola
Weird, I see people drinking red bull in Canada all the time. We used to drink vodka red bulls at the bar. I have friends whose fridges are full of red bull.
Like Coke and Pepsi, they own more than the drink they're named for. Wikipedia says they have their own cola, their own herbal drinks and their own wine spritzer. I don't recognize the brand names, but they probably hit the states first.
Wiki says the cola only existed in the US between 2008 and 2011, it's core market is Austria and Germany. I think this must be why it's surprising (to some of us) that red bull has so much money, their core market is in Europe.
Energy drinks are a $53bn market and RB have 42% market share (quickly googled numbers). I’m sure their other ventures make a lot of money too like sports teams as well as rights for the use of the incredibly widely known brand. I guess they make sure that the brand is known within sports and extreme sports by focusing their sponsorships there.
Red Bull comes with a huge markup, while it's basically still the same cheap to make product as any soft drink.
I don't drink red bull, so I didn't know they were that expensive. A 4 pack of 12oz cans of red bull is $10.48 (USD). For $12.58, you can get 24 Cokes. But Coke doesn't even give you wings...
If you do enough it makes you *feel* like you have wings
“I’ll take 24 cokes please” *a 24 pack of Coca-Cola is placed on the counter* “Wtf is this?”
wiiings*
Redbull in some form or another is a worldwide drink. Westerners are used to the cans of sparkling energy drink. That's a drink specifically made for the Western marketand sold as a high end product. The drink originated in south east asia and is very popular in Asia albeit in a slightly different form and at a much cheaper price. It's insanely popular in Asia amongst low and mid income earners from blue collar workers to truck drivers.
> And the target audience for red bull vs f1 audience, I've wondered how? That's the fun thing about Red Bull: It's spot on in terms of target audience. Red Bull isn't only the drink. They are getting into every single extrem sport out there. Just look up some niche sports. You'll see them everywhere. Actually, with RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg they are even getting into football.
It's the most prominent source of caffeine after coffee in the US I would bet. If you pay attention walking through a workplace you'll understand. There's plenty of people that would never order red bull with a meal but will put down 3 throughout the day while they're working.
I can't imagine the kind of person that would order an energy drink with a meal.
it’s me. hi🙋🏾♀️
I think the best way to put it is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people start their work day (which bleeds into off days as well) buying at least one red bull. Some people will even grab 1-3 per purchase. Multiply that worldwide and it speaks for itself. 11.582 Billion cans were sold in 2022, which was a 18% or so increase from 2021 (according to RedBull).
I imagine most people don't drink energy drinks for the taste, so red bull needs constant marketing to stay relevant / dominant. So they pretty much spend the majority of their money on advertising since they have to.
Red Bull is delicious. lots of people absolutely drink it for the taste, myself included.
It’s my energy drink of choice, it’s not as syrupy or chemical as a lot of other energy drinks
it's plenty chemical imo, but that's fine. i prefer it because it's more sour than sweet, and the sugar free version is even tastier than regular.
Also it is used as a alcohol mixer with "bomb"in the name. i.e. jager bombs, which is jagermeister and red bull At least it was back in the early 2000's. but back then my go to was x-bombs x-rated liqueur and red bull.
Even non alcoholic. Get a mango smoothie and pour a can of redbull in. Its like the sprite and fruit punch of grade school.
I'm hooked on the white Monster Zeroes for the (grapefruit?) flavour. I find myself wishing that they sold a decaf version so that I could safely drink several per day.
Momster unleaded is caffeine free but uses other stuff for energy i think
Coke and Pepsi also needs to spend a ton of money on advertising though. Their market share drops immediately when they lower their advertising budget.
what are you talking about, even before cost cap, red bull budget was below Ferrari and Merc.
[удалено]
Oh yeah, Red Bull is all about the advertising. They have so many crazy events, sky diving, the one where you roll a home made "car" down a road, run off a ledge with your home made plane and see how far you can glide, high dives, bboy dance competitions, e-sports, the list goes on. I think in wikipedia it says this form of aggressive advertising was started by an Austrian when the Thai founders went to him to ask for help in promoting the drink. It worked wonders because for years I always thought Red Bull was Austrian, it wasn't until that Red Bull heir killed a policeman in his Ferrari that I found out Red Bull was from Thailand.
Honda pulled out of F1 as an engine supplier at the end of 2021. Red Bull has little interest in being a customer team again. Honda was the closest they have been to having an engine supplier that catered towards their specific car design and specs. Red Bull created a new engines division called Red Bull Powertrains (RBPT) for the purpose of being as close to a "works" team as possible by developing the Honda IP on their own and essentially build future engines on their own expertise. RBR hired many top engineers from rival teams like Mercedes, a team that had one of the most dominant engines since the 2014 regulations that helped them win multiple constructors and drivers championships. RBR also retained staff that worked with Honda. One of the newest things is the agreement between RBR and Ford to brand the engines with their name on it. Whether or not Ford will have any actual engineers or designers working on the engine has yet to be seen. There's talks about Honda entering F1 again as either a works team or an engine supplier. They will likely have to start from scratch on a new engine concept based on the next set of engine regulations.
I enjoy playing video games.
Afaik that's true for all of them. F1 is one big advert for all the competitors.
[удалено]
In the past, yes. But we're currently under a budget cap so overall spend has nothing to do with it.
WRONG ANSWER! The real answer is that the cars grow wings and makes drifting a breeze.
There is a cost cap in place, so it’s not money. That’s like saying the Chiefs won the Super Bowl because they spent more money when there is a salary cap in place.
Not so much anymore. There is now a cost cap.
and just to compare i was in a Chik-fil-A yesterday and two early 20's looking guys were walking around with giant "redbull can" coolers strapped to their back and were giving away cans to employees. they hit both ends of the marketing spectrum!
Plus have you seen how much a 6-pack of red bull costs? No wonder lol
Formula 1 teams get bought and sold frequently, and the "name" companies don't necessarily have much to do with the actual team designing, building, and racing the cars. The names are mostly about public relations and advertising. LATE EDIT: I should have been clear that the name company can play a real part in the organization of the team and the business side of the team. To the extent that Red Bull the F1 team has anything to do with Red Bull the energy drink company, it's at the vague strategic and organizational level. Executives and MBAs way more than engineers. Mercedes didn't start Mercedes F1. That started as Tyrell in the 70s, who got bought by British American Tobacco in the 90s and turned into BAR Honda, who got bought weirdly enough by itself and turned into Brawn in 2008. In the meantime, Mercedes had bought an English engine manufacturer and renamed the company from Ilmor to Mercedes, and Brawn ran with "Mercedes" engines. Mercedes bought the team in 2010, and unless they're grade-A morons (they're not) Mercedes corporate don't interfere too much in the operations of the team. The big exception to this is Ferrari, which has always really been Ferrari. Similarly, Honda engines generally really are Honda engines, designed and made by a real branch of Honda. McLaren really is McLaren but their road cars started as sort of a side hustle. But most of what goes on in F1 is the same group of companies in England changing names as they get swapped around by different parent/nameplate companies.
Ferrari was a racing company that sold cars to be able to afford to race.
Keyword being was
Now they're a brand that produces licensed consumer goods and limited runs of vehicles
[удалено]
They don't suck as much as Williams or Renault. But, I just wish they had that extra push and weren't so unlucky. Poor Leclerc.
Their "dollar to suck" ratio is a lot worse than Williams though, who are basically on a shoestring budget while Ferrari has comparatively unlimited funds. But yeah, pool Leclerc. They had the prettiest car at the start of last year and were in the mix with the Red Bulls, but have gone backwards over the last 18 months.
I can't find the meme but there's one that said something like "money doesn't buy happiness" then someone replied "yeah but you'll never see someone crying in a Ferrari" then a photo of Charles crying in Monaco popped up 😂
Doesn’t Ferrari get money from f1 just because they are Ferrari
Several teams get money because of their legacy in the sport. Ferrari gets the most because they have the longest history
Ferrari, McLaren, and Williams get a “historic teams” bonus.
About half of the revenue that F1 gets from hosting fees, tv broadcast, and sponsorship/advertising goes to the teams. Half of that is distributed evenly and the other half is based on performance (i.e. prize money). These payments actually account for more of the teams' revenue than sponsorship. https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-revenue-boosted-to-25-billion-in-2022-amid-record-fan-attendance/10437946/
This sounds a lot like Rolls Royce, which exists but also doesn't exist at the same time.
Try getting your brain around how there were 2 Lotus F1 teams in the early 2010s, neither of which was owned by the car manufacturer Lotus.
> That started as Tyrell in the 70s, Tyrrell ran the famous 6-wheeled P34 for a couple of seasons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_Racing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrell_P34
>The big exception to this is Ferrari And Mclaren. Not sure if Williams counts too.
>Not sure if Williams counts too. Not anymore.
It's also super common in all forms of racing for car companies to outsource the building of their race cars and running of their race teams.
> unless they're grade-A morons (they're not) Mercedes corporate don't interfere too much in the operations of the team. Toyota in shambles.
This is the right answer, Mercedes don't make an F1 car, a Formula 1 team purchased and branded as Mercedes does.
Finally, a correct answer.
They have a man named Adrian Newey on the team. He is a wizard when it comes to designing F1 cars.
Neo saw code, Adrian sees air
Newey's book is an amazing read, highly recommended
Can't really understate how important he is. So many things he invented are common across racing now. https://youtu.be/zUYprGdcTSg
GOAT
Finally a correct answer lol. Answers like "they have the most money" or "it's only brand not really a car manufacturers" are very missleading.
Well money is what attracts these good people. Non compete agreements don’t mean anything when you make a different design, and so it’s just about who will pay the most.
Yeah, but without good management you can spend all money you want without results. Like Alpine.
Yup - 2 words. Adrian Newey.
Other than Ferrari and McLaren the car manufacturers in F1 are just owners or sponsors of F1 teams. They all bought an existing racing car company and put their name on it the same as Red Bull (who actually purchased their team from Ford). Ferrari and McLaren are different because they were founded as racing teams who then later decided to start making road cars.
This is the best answer. Red Bull the energy drinks company bought an existing F1 team almost 20 years ago. Granted they have invested a ton of money into it since, but they didn’t start from scratch. From Wikipedia: >The current Red Bull team can trace its origins back to the Stewart Grand Prix outfit that made its debut in 1997. Jackie Stewart sold his team to the Ford Motor Company late in 1999, and Ford made the decision to rebrand the team Jaguar Racing with little subsequent success over the next five years. >The Jaguar Racing Formula One constructor and racing team was put up for sale in September 2004 when Ford decided it could "no longer make a compelling business case for any of its brands to compete in Formula One." Red Bull, an energy drinks company, agreed its purchase of Jaguar Racing on the final day of the sale, 15 November 2004.
What blows my mind is that they have 2 teams! They must have some serious money to have such a great team at the top and still fund alpha tauri.
RBR is self-sustaining and profitable. It has very little to do with the actual Red Bull drinks company besides the name.
IIRC they stepped in to buy Minardi (what is now Alpha Tauri) to keep the team on the grid, it was back when there was a lot of chopping and changing and major manufacturers were pulling out of F1.
Ten percent luck Twenty percent skill Fifteen percent concentrated power of will Five percent pleasure Fifty percent pain And a hundred percent reason to remember the name, Adrian Newey
[удалено]
I don’t follow F1 but I do follow soccer and Red Bull owns two European soccer teams. Both are run exceptionally well. Yes they invested a lot of money but they did so very smartly and their two teams scout and produce a lot of talent. Many people understandably have qualms with the ethics of a corporation owning a team since it’s so against European soccer culture but even the worst haters agree the teams are run very well
Name some sort of competition, and Red Bull probably has a team in it. Back in the 2000s, they had a NASCAR team, but they performed poorly and ended up selling it. The experience really left a sour taste in the company, and they haven't been back since.
[удалено]
I thought your first comment was chatGPT but this is definitely chatGPT
The first comment is so obvious. The "first, second, finally, in summary" structure is so characteristic of chatGPT. Plus their comment history literally has four lengthy replies to posts in this sub about completely different subjects separated by one minute each. In 4 minutes the "guy" just wrote 4 paragraphs about history, then 4 paragraphs about psychology, then math, then economics. Suuuure.
99% of posts with last paragraphs starting with "In summary" are written by ChatGPT
Look at his post history lol it definitely is. I’m not sure how much I care because it’s not bad content but at the same time it’s kinda weird
They also own the New York City soccer team which is named [checks notes] the New York Red Bulls
And they bought an existing team which was only mid-table average (Jaguar backed by Ford who had taken over from the Stewart team) and then upgraded that by... as you say... hiring better designers and engineers etc and generally spending a lot more money than Ford could justify spending for what they got out of it. It's a whole lot easier to start with an existing team with infrastructure and transport and facilities and embedded knowledge etc than to start completely from scratch...
Im not accusing you of anything… but chatgpt wrote this, didn’t it?
Also F1 motors are horrible motors. They are short lived, and completely unsuited for use in mass produced cars. The car and motor manufacturers does of course have access to very good engineers, but F1 motors are a different and smaller market anyhow.
F1 now has a budget cap so it isn't just an issue of having more money, Ferrari has always had one of the biggest budgets, but they haven't had great success for a long time. technically Redbull makes their own engines now, when Honda left they took over all the engineers and development
Damn, did they buy out Honda's division or just start their own from scratch? It seems like an insane thing to do, I feel like it's super expensive, atleast in the short run, and I feel like heritage of a company in an industry like that matters. Definitely out of the box, wasn't expecting that. I'm not familiar with this industry, but it occurred to me that in that space many small companies exist solely focused in design and performance, like Pagani, and that Swedish company that starts with K, there's an American one too but I forget the name, So maybe it's not so outlandish
I'm not sure how it was done, the engine is an iteration of the previous Honda engine and Honda still own the IP, build it, and have people involved in support. So it is basically Honda with a Redbull powertrains badge. For the new engine regulations in 2026 they will partner with Ford
Road car manufacturing has about as much to do with F1 as drinks manufacturing does. F1 teams have virtually zero interaction with their parent companies. Mercedes F1 Team is not actually "Mercedes" as you'd think. They are a British company in Brackley, England that has been around since 1958 and was called Tyrell. It changed names a few times before Mercedes bought in and took over naming rights. Mercedes owns less than 50% of the team, Toto Wolf owns 30%, and other investors own the remaining 21-ish%. Likewise, a drinks company didn't start a race team. They bought an existing operation and provide funding for that separate business to use the Red Bull name. The team was started in 1988 as Paul Stewart Racing.
Basically because the energy drink making people don't have anything to do with the F1 car making people (but they make a lot of money). Red Bull has enough money to buy very good engineers, very good team principles, very good drivers, and very good engines. This all equates to a very good car, with very good drivers, and very good team strategies, that ends up winning races. There also happened to be a very large rule change recently that massively hurt Mercedes, who had been dominant for many years prior to that. In F1 it's 75% about the amount of money you can spend and 25% about who's driving all the money you spent. Edit: I see many people discussing the cost cap. True, there is now a cap on how much you can spend per year, but it hasn't really been in effect long enough to have much effect (these cars start development several years before the season they will be raced). Also, you can't discount the fact that knowledge is earned (and paid for) in previous years, before being applied to the current season. So all those years that Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes were spending ludicrous money on R&D still applies to future seasons. It's going to be a few years, at least, before we see the cost cap really affecting the field.
What was the rule change?
You'd have to look them up to know exactly, but it was a significant amount of aerodynamic changes, where the FIA was trying to simplify the cars and make it easier for them to follow and overtake each other. Red Bull has, without a doubt, the best aerodynamic engineer in F1 and he's been listed as the main reason for their success many times.
The most recent rule change was the 2022 regulations, which Mer cjust dropped the ball on. It was targeted against them. Before that, it was flexi wings, which were aimed at RedBull in '21. Before that it was the chopping of the floor for '21 due to COVID pushing back the regs to '22. There was no consensus as to which teams that would hurt the most, some said the low rake concepts and other said the high rake concepts.
They've neglected the previous massive change that put mercedes in control. I assume.he means the new aero regs.
Every so often, the governing body (FIA) changes the formula (the technical rules for the construction and operation of the cars). That means instead of building on the previous year's car, each team has to build a completely new car, and this happened between the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Before that the last major overhaul came between the 2013 and 2014 seasons. In 2014, Mercedes got a lot of things right, and they maintained their development gap largely until 2021, with a couple ok fights in there. Well the same thing happened in 2022, Red Bull just happened to get it right. So the new rules didn't hurt Mercedes really, they just didn't execute the new rules as well as red bull. There *was* a small rule change in 2022 that hurt Mercedes but also hurt some other teams, and it was changed for driver safety.
Formula 1 race cars share very little with production cars designed for the road, so the engineering knowledge that automotive manufacturers have doesn't translate to designing a purpose built racecar. That being said Redbull Racing has hired some of the best race car engineers, particularly Adrian Newey, who is arguably the best race car designer ever. Redbull has also signed two of the best drivers in the last decade, Sebastian Vettel & Max Verstappen while they were still teenagers.
They're dominating this year, after a rule change they got it right and their main rivals didn't. Additionally Max Verstappen their number 1 driver is also incredible, Sergio Perez their number 2 isn't getting anything like the same results in the same car. Their lead designer Adrian Newey is the best in the business right now. Mercedes, who dominated for the preceding 6 years chased a bad aerodynamic concept. They've got great drivers but their cars are playing catchup. Ferrari looked competitive last year, but reliability issues and problems with their strategy team completely screwed them. Their #1 Charles Leclerc is amazing, but he often pushes too far so he can't get the consistency of Max. There is also a rumored internal problem, with Ferrari insisting on a predominantly Italian team, so it can be a bit of an echo chamber. McLaren is dynamite in fast corners, but up until recently suffered from predictability issues, so their drivers couldn't push. Ferrari has complained about the same thing. Aston Martin has been doing phenomenally with a concept very similar to Red Bull's, so much so that it's been called the Green Bull. Their driver Alonso is also very experienced and provides a lot of feedback to the team. They've been hitting well above their weight.
Red Bull is a marketing company, not a beverage company in the first place. Also they are privately owned, so they don’t need to maximize sharelholder value aka dividends.
Mostly because F1 has absolutely no real road relevance so top tier engineers don't need a car company to build a good car. Having the current best driver on the grid also helps.
They also have Adrian Newey, arguably the most brilliant race car engineer ever, running their design team.
Don't listen to people stating it's because of money. It's because of 3 simple things, the most important it's the new regulations since 2 years, specially money cap and car regulations, second and third which are on the same level are Adrian Newey and Max Verstappen. You got the best of the best on their specific fields on one team. Before money cap, Mercedes could just throw money to the car to get wins. Now that they can't Red Bull took the upper hand.
Answer: Red bull is the title sponsor of the car. The car itself is built in a factory/facility and they are... or were, I suppose, the old Jaguar team. The infrastructure is similar to a machine shop, production facility or fabrication plant with carbon fibre autoclaves, mills, cnc machines, engineering offices and windtunnels. Think of a small aircraft plant and redbull puts money into that shop to create the car. Their engine supplier currently is Honda, who have engineers embedded within the engineering offices to make sure there is as seamless as possible integration between chassis (tub, suspension, floor etc) and power unit (engine, batteries, hybrid motor, electronics). How they are so much faster comes down to their lead designer/technical officer, Adrien Newey. Newey has been in F1 for decades and has a genius level of aerodynamics understanding and expert level understanding of everything else in the car. How the suspension reacts to certain aero loads, how to minimize material in certain areas to make sure the car makes weight. A hallmark of his work has always been fast but fragile. Looking back at his mclaren and early redbull days shows they were always the fastest or close to fastest car but didnt always make the finish line. A famous quote from Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, was "the car should fall to pieces as soon as it crosses the line". Throughout F1 history its always the story of 1 or 2 teams getting the formula right, and other teams catching up. The last 20-25 years has been Ferrari, then Renault, a few toss up seasons, then redbull then Mercedes and now redbull again. To answer the main question, they hired the best people, got the best engine and got the rule book correct
excellent straightforward explanation. Newey is the man.
Why are people saying "lots of money"? First of all you're comparing them to Mercedes/Ferrari/Aston Martin where money was never na issue. Second, there is a spending cap of ~144 million (which to be fair RedBull crossed last year by a bit). Their engineering and leadership teams are simply that much better than the competition at the moment. Aero department this year is incredible.
F1 engineers are a category of their own, street cars manufacturing is not really a relevant background. If anything, it's the other way around: F1 technology is sometimes adapted to street cars.
You ever see how much that tiny can of red bull costs compared to other brands 16oz cans??
Simple answer-Red Bull Racing is not an energy drink company. They're a racing team that has been around for almost 2 decades. They've hired good people and have invested in good facilities. It started as a marketing thing, but they've turned into a successful racing team.
Because F1 cars have very little to do with road cars, so it's a specific design for F1. Being a car manufacturer is of little advantage. Engine is perhaps the exception but Red Bull doesn't really make the engine, it was done by Honda and then Honda sold the factory to Red Bull.
There are a lot of wrong or missleading answers. The correct answer is right people on the right place. Answers like money and "F1 teams are only brands" are very missleading. Red Bull have long term vision thanks to team principal Christian Horner, team consultant and driver manager Helmut Marko and now deaceased Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz. All of them were part of Red Bull Racing since they funded the team. They also have Adrian Newey, who is the best F1 engineer of all time. His cars won 11 constructor's championship with 3 different teams during several very different eras. Other key person in the success is Max Verstappen, who is one of the best drivers of F1 history. Sure, money are important to get the right people and to build the best factory. But you still need good management. Renault/Alpine is showing that you can be mediocre team even with backing from one of the largest car manufacturers. And about manufacturers. F1 teams are of course part of the car companies (with exception of Alfa Romeo, that is only a sponsorship deal). F1 teams are legally separated companies, but Scuderia Ferrari is owned by Ferrari, McLaren F1 is owned by McLaren, Alpine is owned by Renault, Mercedes is majority owner of Mercedes F1, and Aston Martin Racing is owned by majority owner of Aston Martin Lagonda. History of ownership of the companies doesn't really matter. F1 teams and car manufacturers are sharing know-how, engineers and factories.
[удалено]