Does Red Bull Racing irritate anyone else?

[carbonfootprint]

This may come off as a rant but I really don't 'get' RBR or RB Tech or RB....nevermind.

What are they doing? They get worse and worse but I keep hearing they are getting better! Am I watching different races?

What makes this more annoying? Reading things like "the RB3/RB4 has clear potential" - I'm sorry, I just dont see it. 'Fast but fragile', 'unlocked potetial' *yawn* gimme a break...

I know teams all talk themselves up, but at least Honda etc lately have become more 'realistic'

I also dont think they have created the marketing image they intended.

They tried the Chelsea approach and made too many big noises from early 05'. The real problem with this is that they are against some companies that simply dwarf Red Bull.

Ideally they should have created a team image like Super Aguri with a bit of old Jordan thrown in - both of which have shown genuine giant killing performances and has/had a huuuge following for it. Everyone loves an underdog.

F1 is a massive outlay for a company with 1 product and no real sponsorship - especially one which an already enormous advertising spend.

However, it has been refreshing to see Webber insert a dose of reality into the media spin playing down any good performances they manage to fluke on low fuel.

How much longer can this continue?

[sniff petrol]

TBH they have 2 of the unluckiest drivers ever so you can't really make a fair judgement.

[EDLT]

You have been watching a different race. Red Bull consistently out perform their back-of-the-pack pretensions, they even score points when they don't crash.

Also, are you implying Red Bull NEED sponsorship? They make a huge amount of money selling that drink and evidently spend their profits on people throwing themselves of piers. And NASCAR.

[deevlash]

Ill bet 20 shiny pennies that red bull make more money than most of the F1 grid. Red bull exist to market their drink, the F1 is just an extension of that. I think theyre good fun, I bet the enrgy station is a good laugh. They also sponsor a hell of a lot of young up and coming drivers in all sorts of motorsport.

[carbonfootprint]

sniff petrol said:

TBH they have 2 of the unluckiest drivers ever so you can't really make a fair judgement.

Anyone who drives an F1 car for a crust is not unlucky

It is up to them to make their own luck.

I suspect Webber has become the new Fisi circa late 90's early 00's - 'he would be great if given a good car'

Well, we all know what happened...

[69elan+2]

carbonfootprint said:

How much longer can this continue?

As SniffPetrol said they have had some very bad luck in F1, and I honestly couldnt say how long they will carry on. But as an overall company they must have a staggering amount of financial power (their UK HQ is pretty breath-taking!).

Totally off topic we actually tried to name how many different cars / bikes / boats / planes ect they had put their name on!:



some pretty cool bits of kit!

[carbonfootprint]

I don't think it's as sustanable as they make out - not by a long shot.

Regarding RB's income vs the rest of the paddock, if you are referring to the teams then, yes I'll take that bet

Toyota
Honda
BMW
Mercedes Benz
Renault/Nissan
Force India's owner is worth more

[EDLT]

carbonfootprint said:

I don't think it's as sustanable as they make out - not by a long shot.

Regarding RB's income vs the rest of the paddock, if you are referring to the teams then, yes I'll take that bet

Toyota
Honda
BMW
Mercedes Benz
Renault/Nissan
Force India's owner is worth more

Renault isn't that well off (compaired to Toyota anyway), but that Force India guy can't be THAT rich, India doesn't have much oil. Unless he owns the entire telesales industry?

[carbonfootprint]

Fair point about Renault/Nissan - I wasnt going to include them BUT they are 'worth' alot more that Red Bull

Force India's owner is uber rich, just one of his many companies is worth that of Red Bull

Edited by carbonfootprint on Friday 21st March 23:29

[Dare2Fail]

carbonfootprint said:

I don't think it's as sustanable as they make out - not by a long shot.

Regarding RB's income vs the rest of the paddock, if you are referring to the teams then, yes I'll take that bet

Toyota
Honda
BMW
Mercedes Benz
Renault/Nissan
Force India's owner is worth more

From a brief bit of Google work Redbull reported sales of $1 billion last year. A retailer will make a 42% profit on selling a can for £1.20 (they can them wholesale for £0.70). I would imagine that it will cost Redbull very little to produce a single can of their product and they are therefore raking in the cash.

I love the fact that Redbull plough vast amounts of money into motorsport. They have made a big impact in bike racing over the last few years (see the Redbull Rookies programme in the UK). As an aside, the big cheese at Redbull is supposed to have a truly breathtaking collection of privately owned cars and bikes.

[belleair302]

Red Bull spend around 9 pence of every can sold worldwide on F1, other than the cost of the can (aluminium) it is the second most expensive cost to the company. Toyota spend around £11 on every car sold worldwide on F1. I know who makes better use of their money. Red Bull in 2007 spent £117 million on their whole F1 programme, Toyota spent £130 million of their own money on F1 excluding additional sponsors. Need any more persuasion regarding who best spends their money???

The owner of Red Bull is worth about three times as much as Vijay Mallya acording to Forbes in 2007.

Edited by belleair302 on Friday 21st March 23:50

[carbonfootprint]

BTW Red Bull has three owners.

Again, just one of Mallya's companies is as valuable as Red Bull.

"I love the fact that Redbull plough vast amounts of money into motorsport."

Agreed

"Red Bull spend around 9 pence of every can sold" Wow that much? That's huge compared to Toyota from a percentage point of view

Edited by carbonfootprint on Saturday 22 March 00:09

[heebeegeetee]

I think RB are a positive and enjoyable contribution to the sport and i'm glad they (and their money) are in it.

[Dare2Fail]

carbonfootprint said:

"Red Bull spend around 9 pence of every can sold" Wow that much? That's huge compared to Toyota from a percentage point of view

Edited by carbonfootprint on Saturday 22 March 00:09

It depends, because the info above will be as a percentage of turnover as opposed to a percentage of profit. I would imagine Toyota would still have a lower percentage of total profit going to F1 than Redbull given the scale of their operation, but I would love to know the figures if someone could find them.

[flemke]

belleair302 said:

Red Bull spend around 9 pence of every can sold worldwide on F1, other than the cost of the can (aluminium) it is the second most expensive cost to the company. Toyota spend around £11 on every car sold worldwide on F1. I know who makes better use of their money. Red Bull in 2007 spent £117 million on their whole F1 programme, Toyota spent £130 million of their own money on F1 excluding additional sponsors. Need any more persuasion regarding who best spends their money???

One can debate who gets better value for money (although we'd never come to a conclusion).
However, your example of cost of F1 per can v cost of F1 per car is quite misleading (not intentionally, I'm sure) because it ignores the fact that Toyota's units sell for so much more than Red Bull's units do.

The more relevant benchmark is cost of the advertising in relation to total revenue. Red Bull's revenue for '07 was in the range of $3B. Toyota's revenue was over $200B. The two companies spent roughly the same amount on F1, so for Red Bull the expenditure was roughly 60x more costly.
It could be argued that the benefit to Red Bull was worth it (because of their target market and because of their image in F1), and the benefit to Toyota was not worth it, but that's another story.

Cheers.

[sniff petrol]

Dare2Fail said:

From a brief bit of Google work Redbull reported sales of $1 billion last year. A retailer will make a 42% profit on selling a can for £1.20 (they can them wholesale for £0.70). I would imagine that it will cost Redbull very little to produce a single can of their product and they are therefore raking in the cash

And that imitation stuff that all the shops seem to sell starts at 24p a can and they must be making a profit at that price so selling "the same" stuff for 4-5 times the cost must be very profitable.

[LocoBlade]

$1 billion (in sales) isnt a huge amount really in F1 terms, Im sure Ive seen figures bandied about that Ferrari and Toyota's budgets for the year are nearly half that alone, so unless Red Bull spend 40-50% of their sales on F1 or pull in other big sponsors they're never going to have the same budgets as the big boys.

[rubystone]

flemke said:

The more relevant benchmark is cost of the advertising in relation to total revenue. Red Bull's revenue for '07 was in the range of $3B. Toyota's revenue was over $200B. The two companies spent roughly the same amount on F1, so for Red Bull the expenditure was roughly 60x more costly.
It could be argued that the benefit to Red Bull was worth it (because of their target market and because of their image in F1), and the benefit to Toyota was not worth it, but that's another story.

Cheers.

I think the interesting statistic is the percentage of profit - I'm sure Red Bull make more profit per unit sold as a percentage of its wholesale cost than Toyota. I'm sure the profit figures for both are out there somewhere....

In fact when the OP posted, I immediately thought of Toyota as the perennial underachiever, not Red Bull, who continue to make good progress and when Vettel replaces one of their drivers (and at this time I'm not sure which one he will replace - it's very possible that both Webber and Coulthard will not have their contracts renewed for 2009) we'll see them continue to move up the grid.

I like the cut of their jib - amything Newey is involved in is always interesting - to me at least....

[castrolcraig]

the sheer amounts of money/product that red bull supply in sponshorship in worldwide motorsport is phoneomenal, take bsb for instance, up until the end of last season they supplied us with all our drinks and still paid a fee, as well as paying jonny rea to have a red bull helmet, not to mention motogp where you have nicky hayden, dani pedrosa, the ktm 125.250 and a multitude of others with red bull on them!!

as a previous poster pointed out, you also have nascar!!!

[flemke]

rubystone said:

flemke said:

The more relevant benchmark is cost of the advertising in relation to total revenue. Red Bull's revenue for '07 was in the range of $3B. Toyota's revenue was over $200B. The two companies spent roughly the same amount on F1, so for Red Bull the expenditure was roughly 60x more costly.
It could be argued that the benefit to Red Bull was worth it (because of their target market and because of their image in F1), and the benefit to Toyota was not worth it, but that's another story.

Cheers.

I think the interesting statistic is the percentage of profit - I'm sure Red Bull make more profit per unit sold as a percentage of its wholesale cost than Toyota. I'm sure the profit figures for both are out there somewhere....

It's difficult to locate helpful data for RB, because they're private.
It appears that in '05 their margins were 20%, although it's not clear whether that was pre- or after-tax. My guess is that it would be pre-. In '07, it appears (contrary to the source that I used for the above) that their gross revenue was approaching $5B. Almost certainly their margins would have gone down a bit in those two years, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that their pre-tax was $1B. They probably have a hundred different little tax...shall we say "tax optimisation techniques"...going, but maybe their average tax rate was 20%, so their net might have been $800M.
Toyota's net income for FY '07 was $13.8B.
On Belleair's numbers, Red Bull F1 expenditure was 14.6% of net, whilst Toyota's was 0.9% of net.