Tony Brooks, a Formula 1 driver in the late 1950s and early 1960s, once leveled a serious criticism at his former boss in racing, Enzo Ferrari: “He thought that psychological pressure would produce better results for the drivers… .You can drive to the maximum of your ability, but once you start psyching yourself up to do things that you don’t feel are within your ability it gets stupid.” Without the fear of death on the line, Il Commendatore’s behavior back in the day sounds an awful lot like the Red Bull Racing team’s approach to its own drivers in modern Formula 1.
See, Enzo Ferrari wanted to be the best, but he knew that a strong car with a powerful engine was only one part of the equation; he’d also need the world’s best drivers behind the wheel of his racing machines. So he’d seek out and sign the best talent in the motorsport world, maintaining a steady repertoire of top-level talent at his beck and call.
There was just one problem: not all of those drivers could race for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula 1.
That was by design. Enzo wanted his drivers pushed to the ragged edge. He wanted Wolfgang von Trips looking over his shoulder at teammate Phil Hill as the two battled for the 1961 World Championship. Over dinner before the 1957 Mille Miglia, Ferrari goaded Alfonso de Portago by pointing out he would inevitably finish behind teammate Olivier Gendebien; as a result, de Portago ignored mechanics’ warnings that a tire was rubbing against his bodywork before ultimately crashing, slicing himself in two and mowing down a row of nine spectators. Ferrari encouraged a rivalry to build up between Luigi Musso, Peter Collins, and Mike Hawthorn, and it reached a point where both Musso and Collins killed themselves trying to prove their worth on the track. Having won the 1958 Word Championship, Hawthorn immediately retired before he could be killed in a Ferrari as well. Three months later, he died in a road accident.
Ferrari’s mind games took many forms. He used politics to create driver hierarchies. He doubled down on a driver’s faults, reminding them of every car they’d ever crashed. He signed drivers but refused to let them race in Formula 1. Between 1955 and 1971, eight Ferrari drivers were killed by racing Ferrari’s cars — which isn’t even counting the likes of Gilles Villeneuve or Charles de Tornaco. Other drivers like Niki Lauda were injured in a Ferrari — and Lauda forced himself to return to the track when Ferrari lost faith in his ability to recover. Ferrari wanted his drivers desperate. He wanted them afraid. He wanted to transform a magnanimous, charismatic competitor into an unassured paranoiac.
And without that “death” consequence, Enzo Ferrari’s mindset sounds a whole lot like what Red Bull Racing’s modus operandi — as if Helmut Marko and Christian Horner have taken a page out of Ferrari’s psychological warfare playbook. But Red Bull has admittedly refined the formula.
Many of the key facets of Enzo Ferrari’s beliefs as a team owner are replicated on a larger scale with Red Bull Racing, AlphaTauri, and the Red Bull Junior Program. The Junior Program not only seeks out the best talent available, but it hones and refines that talent in young drivers as early as 11 years old.
By signing up anyone with a halfway decent chance of growing into a formidable racer, the Junior Program almost guarantees itself a future World Champion. If the conditions are right — if the car has dominated the regulations of the era, if the driver has been sufficiently dedicated — then Red Bull is happy. If the conditions are wrong, those drivers are pitted against one another as they battle for an F1 seat.
We only need to look back at recent history to see this in action. In a pursuit to find the next boy wonder like Sebastian Vettel or Max Verstappen, Red Bull has demanded more of its young drivers than many can be reasonably be expected to achieve — and if they fail to perform in the team’s ever-shortening windows of opportunity, they’ll catch the axe.
In the modern era of F1, death behind the wheel is a rarity. Instead, Red Bull has had to go the route of cleaning house: demoting or firing drivers as it sees fit, all while signing up as much young talent as it can find to replenish its stores.
Ferrari’s mindset resulted in a unique kind of mental devastation in his drivers, and many pushed themselves into the grave trying to meet Il Commendatore’s high standards. Red Bull has pushed its drivers to a similar level.
Jaime Alguersuari, who was promoted to Toro Rosso partway through the 2009 season, is one example. Alguersuari and his teammate Sebastién Buemi failed to live up to the high expectations set by Sebastian Vettel, and the 19-year-old driver became the youngest in the field at the time when he replaced a 30-year-old Sebastién Bourdais. But Alguersuari was expected to fill a pair of very big shoes, and he didn’t. He was fired in 2011, then attempted to race in Formula E before announcing a very sudden — and early — retirement at the age of 25.
Why retire? In 2022, Alguersuari claimed that massive amounts of therapy failed to aid the “trauma” left in him by his time with Helmut Marko and the Red Bull Junior Program.
“I have not been able to erase this. I have done therapy, when I retired several psychologists helped me,” he said. “Now, even so, strange things come to my head. And sometimes wake up, like, crying, having dreamt of having done a great lap only to see the face of Mr. Marko, angry.”
Or consider one of Alguersuari’s replacements, Jean-Éric Vergne. In his push to eke out an advantage over his shorter, thinner teammates in the era where driver weight was included in the overall total weight of an F1 car, Vergne starved himself to the point of hospitalization. Despite racking up relatively decent performances while malnourished and dehydrated, Vergne knew early in 2014 that it would be his last season in Formula 1. And Helmut Marko stuck to his guns on that firing, even when Sebastian Vettel’s defection opened up surprising slot in Red Bull Racing. Rather than keep the more experienced Vergne around, Marko promoted Daniil Kvyat and filled the empty Toro Rosso space alongside Max Verstappen with Carlos Sainz Jr.
After leaving F1, Vergne moved to Formula E, though it took him a while to shake the paranoia he has picked up in the Red Bull Junior Program. Taking his first few laps in the electric open-wheel car, Vergne recalled that “I actually felt like I was going into a trap after my F1 days.”
Since then, we’ve continued to see a ruthless culling of the Red Bull and Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) teams. In 2016, Kvyat was demoted from Red Bull Racing, and Max Verstappen was promoted, because Kvyat’s performance failed to meet Marko’s standards. The following year, in 2017, Kvyat was replaced by Pierre Gasly for the Malaysian Grand Prix, and Carlos Sainz Jr. defected for Renault with a few races remaining in the year. Gasly, though, was still contesting his Super Formula Championship, and missed the United States Grand Prix, allowing Brendan Hartley to stand in for him. Kvyat was allowed to contest that USGP because the team had no other drivers lined up; he was immediately released after that.
After a quiet 2018, Hartley was released from Toro Rosso in 2019 in exchange for Alexander Albon, while Pierre Gasly was promoted to Red Bull — and then demoted back to Toro Rosso, replaced by Albon. Albon held on until after 2020, when Red Bull signed a non-Red Bull driver to its primary team in the form of Sergio Perez for 2021.
Now, we’ve come face to face with the same practice: Nyck de Vries has been fired from AlphaTauri because he didn’t meet Marko’s expectations. Even though de Vries is technically a rookie, Marko disagrees: “He is 28 years old, has a lot of experience, and has also been able to gain a lot of knowledge as a test driver in various Formula 1 cars. You can’t compare him to a young rookie in my eyes. Why should we wait, and what do two more races matter if you don’t see any improvement?”
Instead, he’ll be replaced by Daniel Ricciardo, who Marko claims is slower than both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez in the simulator but who wouldn’t have a place in F1 without the help of his former team.
The Red Bull mindset has created boy wonders like Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, but it has torn down the egos of countless other racers to get to that point, in much the same way that Enzo Ferrari wasn’t afraid to make a few sacrifices on his way to securing glory for his team.
Even without Enzo at the helm, Ferrari has remained a force to be reckoned with ever since that first-ever F1 race, even if it has stumbled along the way. Perhaps Helmet Marko and Christian Horner are just as keen on ruthlessly tearing their way into the history books — but, just like Ferrari, the light of its glory will always be contrasted by the dark shadows cast by its own behavior.