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

Whereas Racing Bulls – and its earlier monikers – has shared widespread know-how with its ‘mother or father’ Pink Bull squad all through its 19-year tenure in Components 1, the crew is a bona fide constructor in its personal proper.

The Italian-registered squad leans on Pink Bull for gearboxes, suspension, and different tradeable elements to make sure its personal operations don’t swell unnecessarily, however it has additionally been bettering its personal infrastructure to make sure that it might probably stay aggressive.

Having come to the conclusion that its outdated Bicester services had been far too small, Racing Bulls invested in a brand new UK division primarily based in Milton Keynes – successfully throughout the street from Pink Bull’s campus.

This has allowed it to unfold its workforce throughout two bases, taking the choice to not pigeon-hole sure departments into a selected facility.

Group principal Laurent Mekies, in an interview with Autosport’s sister publication Motorsport.com Italy, says that the choice to not “localise” every division ensures that communication between the 2 websites has been enhanced, and in addition permits the workers freedom of selection to decide on whether or not to base themselves within the UK or Italy.

“It’s a fancy course of,” Mekies mentioned. “Should you ask me at present whether or not having two places is a bonus, I’d say no, it’s not – as a result of on this enterprise, all the pieces depends on folks and communication between them, and that’s tough to handle.

“We made an important determination to not localise departments in simply one of many two websites, whether or not it’s aero, design, or manufacturing. As an alternative, we selected a mannequin the place every of those departments has workers each in Faenza and Milton Keynes.

“We name this mannequin ‘Location Free’, and we adopted it for one purpose: the flexibility to recruit folks in each England and Italy.

“We’ve this chance, so to maximise it, we expanded it to all departments. This manner, we are able to provide workers the selection to work in Italy or the UK, which can also be helpful in retaining workers when life selections come into play.”

Mekies additionally defined that, whereas Racing Bulls’ continued acceptance of Pink Bull-designed elements ensured the crew didn’t have to take a position closely in increasing its workforce or in analysis and growth, there are a handful of disadvantages to doing so.

He famous that, given the crew’s lack of involvement within the design processes for these elements, “you don’t absolutely grasp the reasoning behind sure design selections, which could be a problem once we are combating for each tenth of a second”.

In spite of everything, these elements are designed for Pink Bull to suit into its personal aerodynamic philosophy; for Racing Bulls, it should develop its personal automobile with these limitations.

“From Pink Bull’s perspective, it is smart that with two groups in Components 1, they share the few elements allowed by the rules fairly than hiring an additional hundred folks to duplicate work already being carried out elsewhere,” Mekies added.

Regardless, all the pieces else at Racing Bulls’ two bases is indicative of a totally fledged constructor, fairly than of a ‘junior crew’ receiving little greater than cast-offs from its greater brother.

Regardless of its hyperlinks to Pink Bull, Racing Bulls – Mekies argued – successfully operates as an impartial crew, fairly than one linked with a producer within the automotive trade.

The crew was, for a season, Honda’s works entity earlier than Pink Bull took that over in 2019. When Ford makes its return to F1 as a associate to Pink Bull Powertrains, it should work with the lead Pink Bull crew on defining ideas – and Racing Bulls will, successfully, get what it is given.

Max Verstappen, Pink Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, RB F1 Group

Picture by: Pink Bull Content material Pool

“Our services home engineers engaged on simulation, car mechanics, carbon fibre, aerodynamics, automobile dynamics – it’s the definition of a constructor,” Mekies mentioned.

“I’d additionally add that, other than us and Williams, each different crew is related in a roundabout way to an automotive producer. This makes our journey much more fascinating as a result of we’re competing towards giants.

“The purpose is to evolve our crew right into a mannequin that may be aggressive sooner or later.

“We’ve seen that the midfield has made large steps ahead, so we have to put money into folks, processes, and infrastructure. We’ve invested in our new facility in Milton Keynes in addition to in Faenza, and we’ve grown loads.

“However, whereas we work on this, we even have a grand prix to sort out each two weeks, so we have to handle our vitality properly.”