When the Toro Rosso team renamed itself to AlphaTauri, it pledged to become a "sister team" to Formula 1's championship-winning Red Bull team - and this path has progressed with its RB rebrand.
RB has always used transferrable components developed by the lead Red Bull team, but took on the rear suspension package part-way through 2023 in an effort to transform a dismal start to the season. This, along with a series of other upgrades to the floor, put its AT04 chassis in a much more competitive frame to lift it off the bottom of the constructors' championship.
Although there were unfounded suggestions that RB would produce a Red Bull RB19 clone for 2024, it has chosen to pursue its own development path. In assessing the differences between this year's RB20 and VCARB 01 in GPS traces, this becomes apparent; the Red Bull continues to possess greater strengths in higher-speed conditions, but the RB is strong in low-speed corners and under traction. But there's a cross-over point, where the Red Bull's greater aerodynamic efficiency ensures it can build more speed.
In that, there are two cars with common parts with very different sensibilities; the RB20 seems to lack - comparatively, given the car is still a race-winner - grip in areas where compliance is required. That's likely down to its stiffer suspension preference, employed to keep the floor at a steady position.
Behind the scenes, RB is making more use of Red Bull's technology campus, and will have its own facilities based in Milton Keynes just outside of Red Bull's infrastructure to ensure it has a bigger working space in the UK - while retaining the Faenza factory that dates back to the team's days as Minardi.
Per technical director Jody Egginton, this is thanks to the Bicester facility that the team had used as an auxiliary base becoming far too small for the team with its current philosophy.
"We've got well over 100 people in Bicester at the moment," Egginton outlays in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com. "And it's full. That facility is totally full. We've outgrown it. So, we need to move and that's the main driver to relocating in the UK.
"On top of that, the wind tunnel that is in our Bicester facility, we haven't used for three years now because we're using the 60% facility.
"Now the team is, on the technical side to some extent, is in a growth phase, so we need more space and we also are promoting this sort of freedom of movement between sites. We've got a lot of that as a team.
"At the moment, we can't do as much of that as we want because we've got no desk space in Bicester for people to actually come over. So moving to a larger facility helps us. It supports growth and it supports better interaction between the sites.
CEO Peter Bayer added that the stimulus to the impending move to Milton Keynes was that the lease came up on its current Bicester facilities and, on being offered to buy the place by its current landlord, the team declined on the basis of size.
"I have to tip my hat to all the guys working in Bicester and for the patience they had and for the commitment they've shown. They honestly stumbled across each other.
"Last year, the landlord called us and said the lease is running out, I want to sell the property, are you interested in it? And we said no, actually not because it's too small for us. There's no parking, there's no supermarket next to it, there's no food, we have a tiny little old gym which the guys are using.
"That was a unique opportunity for us to say: you know what, let's make a move because we also Red Bull is building a new wind tunnel in Milton Keynes and just to make life easier for everyone we said it's a unique opportunity."
Bayer says the new Milton Keynes facilities at Red Bull's campus, which are being rebuilt from scratch, will be "twice the size" of the Bicester HQ, and the move-in date is slated for the first day of 2025.
There have been myriad growth phases for the team in the near-two decades it has operated as a Red Bull-owned entity. When the ex-Minardi team was taken over at the end of 2005, it operated as a fully minted junior operation and effectively used the previous year's RB1 chassis in 2006 - only modified to fit the rev-limited Cosworth V10 it had been given special dispensation to use as the V8 era was introduced.
From 2007 to 2009, the team then used the same Red Bull chassis as the 'parent' team, modified to fit the Ferrari engine, until it was tasked with building its own from 2010 onwards. This ensured that the late Dietrich Mateschitz had to invest in the Faenza facilities to build contemporary F1 cars to a good standard, given that Minardi's time in the championship had been characterised by a lack of finance.
When Egginton joined the project in 2014, the team was a perennial lower-midfield contender and began to move up the order thanks to the quality of Red Bull junior drivers and the improvements in design.
Under technical chief James Key, the team became more independent and started to develop its cars with fewer Red Bull components, but Egginton re-instilled the previous modus operandi - not to simply cut costs, but also to ensure that the resource needed to develop suspension and gearbox systems could be expended elsewhere.
And, under the new management of Peter Bayer and Laurent Mekies, the team has sought to use the opportunity presented with its new RB branding to become a more 'serious' outfit.
"When you're embedded in it, it's an evolution, but there's been a lot of growth and there's been a lot of development. I think we've improved performance as a team," Egginton says of his 10 years at the team.
"We're going through a loop now of, you know, recent management changes and more people being brought in to strengthen the structure. I see it as all positive.
"I think the way Formula 1 is going, it's how you have to evolve, you know. I think of the Formula 1 10, 15 years ago and now, they're not comparable. So, it was always going to be like that because you can't be competitive without growth."
On the technical side, then, the team is using shared knowledge with Red Bull but firmly treading its own course. But there's still the perception that RB exists solely as a team to develop drivers for what Bayer describes as the "bigger brother" team.
And, when one considers that a) RB currently employs a 35-year-old in one car and b) neither of its current drivers were considered a significant upgrade over the struggling Sergio Perez, it doesn't seem to be operating on that basis particularly well.
But Bayer says that this is, particularly in Yuki Tsunoda's case, a place for drivers to develop over time. Erstwhile team principal Franz Tost used to preach that a new driver needed at least three years to fully bed into F1, and Tsunoda is currently in his fourth and continuing to grow in strength.
And there are drivers queuing up for an RB seat in the near future: Liam Lawson heads that list, Isack Hadjar leads the F2 standings, and promising 17-year-old Arvid Lindblad is impressing in his first year of F3.
While the team still has that philosophy present in its RB rebrand, a move that also includes a visual shift in marketing to occupy the space that Red Bull filled during its nascent years in F1, Bayer says that experience remains valuable as the team rebuilds.
"People say, yeah, but you're here to develop juniors. Yes, but the definition of a junior for us is a driver that ultimately is ready to jump into the Red Bull Racing car.
"In German, you say a swallow doesn't make a summer. What it means is that if Yuki keeps racing on this level consistently, he will be considered for a seat in Red Bull Racing. And that's ultimately exactly our mission.
"And it's the mission we've been given by the shareholders, and if that means that he needs another season next to a very strong Daniel, that could be an option, you know, it could also be an option say that if we now we believe he's ready, we'll talk to Liam.
"We're not in a hurry and despite all the people think we are not and because we do have all the options in our hands."
Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren
