And the award for the worst name in Formula 1 goes to the new “Visa Cash App RB” team.
Once upon a time Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz bought a Formula 1 team from Paul Stoddart in 2005 named “Minardi”. Dietrich Mateschitz renamed the team “Scuderia Toro Rosso”, then shortened it to just “Toro Rosso”.
In 2020 Dietrich Mateschitz changed the team’s name from “Toro Rosso” to “AlphaTauri” in order to promote his Red Bull’s AlphaTauri fashion brand.
After Dietrich Mateschitz died on October 22, 2022, ownership of the Red Bull and AlphaTauri Formula 1 racing teams went to his only son Mark Mateschitz, but the real day-to-day management of the teams has been in the hands of Christian Horner with advising from Dietrich Mateschitz’s longtime friend Dr. Helmut Marko.
That brings us to the horrible renaming of “AlphaTauri” to the new “Visa Cash App RB” team, with the “RB” standing for Racing Bulls, in homage to their sister team officially named “Oracle Red Bull Racing”.
So is this really the worst name for a Formula 1 racing team in the history of the sport?
Tough call.
It turns out Formula 1 is littered with a lot of incredibly poorly named teams including “Goldie Hexagon Racing”, “Phoenix Finance”, “MasterCard Lola” which failed to even qualify for one race before quitting the sport, “Life Racing Engines” which just lacks any creativity, and “Tec-Mec” which only entered one race in 1959 and had to retire their race car after only 6 laps,
Maybe the name “Visa Cash App RB” isn’t the worst name Formula 1 after all.
AlphaTauri F1 team makes switch to new Visa Cash App RB identity