Red Bull Buy Jaguar!

[LUD02C]

Link Click

Talk more later, going to conference now!

[Hondavirgin]

yeah, saw this on F1-live too.

Great news hey? never good to lose a team, there's not many left.

Also, and slightly off topic but still on F1 wheeling and dealing, Jordan have Toyota 2005-spec engines for next year! maybe they'll be midfield instead of backmarkers now?

[LUD02C]

Red Bull will bring in there Forumla 3000 champion Vitannito Luizzi (spelling)
Since Williams and Sauber didn’t give him a chance, I’m more then sure Red Bull will…
Best thing is that Red Bull have a successful record in Formula 3000 so they might be challenging Sauber and Toyota in there first year!

[McChook]

News of the year this

Who does their engine in F3000 - I thought they had renaults, but I'm not sure....

[jackosimm]

good thing the team is staying around!

[LUD02C]

News of the year this

Who does their engine in F3000 - I thought they had renaults, but I'm not sure....

Nar, he is a link for what they use
Engine Information

[LUD02C]

Drivers for RedBull

Click It

[McChook]

Shows how much I know about F3000 - but that's due to the zero coverage of the series.....

Either way, this is pretty amazing... Will be interesting to see who does in the end supply the engines...

[Hondavirgin]

Cosworth has been bought too now, so there's always an option for them, given they've worked the last few years with them.......

[Javed]

This news is really good. Was a sad day for the boys of Jaguar when they thought it was the end. Now this! They are keeping theo riginal jag crew right?

[LUD02C]

I'm sure they will for the first year or so.
But after that they might bring some people up from Formula 3000 gradually.

[LUD02C]

British Formula One stable Jaguar this week became the crown jewel of the Red Bull empire, a rags to riches tale of an Austrian who created a pick-me-up drink nobody knew they needed and made it a global brand. "In 1987, our motto was: there is no market for Red Bull but we will create one," Dietrich Mateschitz likes to recall.

The 60-year-old mogul made Red Bull a best-seller in 120 countries with a marketing strategy that links the super-caffeinated drink with life in the fast lane. In 2003, his company sold 1.5 billion cans of Red Bull and thinks it will up that to 1.9 billion this year, to take its turnover to 1.6 billion euros (two billion US dollars).

It has made the photogenic Mateschitz, who wears a stubble beard, stays single and works three days a week, Austria's first billionaire, according to Forbes magazine. His company has for some time been involved in the world of Formula One racing. It has played sponsor for young racing drivers and been one of the owners of Swiss team Sauber between 1995 and 2001. And it has never made any secret that this too was part of its marketing pitch to make Red Bull cool, along with sponsoring break-dance and creating Stunt-Award in Hollywood.



Mateschitz recently also bought the local Austrian Formula One circuit at Spielberg, in southern Austria. "Everything we do is part of our marketing strategy: Red Bull must be synonymous not only with energy, strength and resilience, but also spirit and creativity," he recently told the Austrian economics weekly Format. The magazine estimated that the company spends 30 percent of its turnover on marketing.

Almost all its 2,000 employees - of whom half are based in the United States and only some 200 at company headquarters in Fuschl, near Salzburg - are marketing experts, while production and distribution activities are outsourced.

Rebuilding the heavily-indebted Jaguar outfit, which it bought from Ford on Monday, is likely to cost several million euros. But Austria's former three-time Formula 1 world champion, Niki Lauda, has said he thinks it is already worth every cent. "It is all about selling more cans of Red Bull. The target market is mostly the youth, who happen to be into racing. It is a huge public relations coup worldwide," said Lauda, who has himself become a noted businessman and calls Mateschitz 'a marketing genius'.

Red Bull was created in 1984 and got off to a rocky start. The company only managed to bring the drink onto the market in 1987, the year in which the Austrian authorities finally gave it the green light. To this day its sale is forbidden in a few countries, among them France, because of a caffeine content that is equal to several cups of coffee.

The idea of Red Bull was born in the early 1980s when Mateschitz came across the energy drinks consumed by taxi drivers in south-east Asia and decided to make something similar and sell it to yuppies and ravers in the West. He is famously reluctant to give interviews, but the company reportedly plans to branch out further still into sport, fashion and leisure. Analysts believe Red Bull is worth four billion euros. Mateschitz, who comes from a poor family, owns 49 percent and his Thai partner, the Yoovidhya family, the remaining 51 percent.

Source AFP