Peter Bayer exclusive: How Red Bull’s trust is transforming the VCARB team
Peter Bayer, CEO of VCARB, has opened up on the challenge of transforming Red Bull’s second F1 team’s fortunes.
Halfway through his first year overseeing the VCARB F1 team, CEO Peter Bayer has spoken about the change in regime he’s brought about in the former AlphaTauri squad.
This year marks a season of revolution for the former Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri squad. Under former team boss Franz Tost, a stalwart of nearly two decades leading the second Red Bull squad, thoughts had turned to considering a sale of the team – only for Red Bull to re-commit their efforts and appoint Peter Bayer as CEO to lead their second squad forward.
VCARB CEO illustrates the key changes in ethos
With Red Bull opting for a refresh of their second team, the company appointed Bayer as CEO of the Faenza-based squad and put Laurent Mekies – former Ferrari sporting director – in place as team boss of the rebranded VCARB outfit.
It’s led to a two-pronged leadership approach to the team and, halfway through their first season together, Bayer explained how he and Mekies are collaborating together to lead the team forward.
“I think we both knew what we were getting into and, in Formula 1, people used to always say you need one boss and you need accountability,” Bayer told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive interview.
“I’ve said many times, I believe that, nowadays, F1 has changed in the last couple of years in a dramatic way.
“It always was a global sport, but now it’s a global phenomenon. Honestly, that is attracting so many fans, all the events are sold out. We’re having, in some areas in the US for example, we’re having double-digit growth rates on the fan base.
“Obviously, it became a lot more complex than what it used to be. So you have technical and sporting, and now financial regulations, which are as important or probably even more important sometimes than the others because, if you squeeze out some dollars from the cap, you can make a step forward.
“Then you’ve got the marketing, the comms, the media, you’ve got the politics, which are ever present in the paddock. So, to split responsibilities, we have a very clear split. Which is racing and sporting is Laurent – finance, business, and strategy is me.
“Obviously, things are always overlapping. We speak every day, at least twice I’d say, and we meet regularly to update each other and make sure that we have each other’s back and move forward. So it’s working super well!
“With Laurent and myself, we set out really from day one to try to bring some new energy and new spirit into the team – we’re pushing the fact that it’s a people’s business and trying to make people understand that every single one of them is part of the success or failure.
“We’re trying to make everyone part of the journey and inviting people to be part of it and I think that has been the biggest source of effort from what you do not see behind the scenes.
“What happens by doing that is that we attract new talent, suddenly people join the team or ask us whether we have an availability for a job which, probably a year ago, we wouldn’t have dreamt of actually discussing with them. So there’s a new dynamic.”
‘Human beings don’t like change’ – How did Faenza react to management upheaval?
AlphaTauri had slumped to the very back of the field during 2023, a far cry from the dominance being shown up front by the main Red Bull squad – leading to the speculation of a sale. With Tost infamously revealing last year that he didn’t trust his engineers as the 2023 car proved uncompetitive, Bayer said finding a new stable base to start from with VCARB had been a top priority.
“Last year was difficult. My bosses were joking when I started, they said, ‘Look, now we’re P10, you’re lucky everything you’ll do will be a step forward!’” he said.
“Jokes aside, by relaunching the team, we managed to get a couple of new, very important people in the early days. Alan Permane (formerly of Alpine), just to name one of them on the racing side, took immediately a very proactive role, and integrated within days literally into the existing team.
“That sort of ignited the ones who have been there for a while. Some people left and so we had a bit of a shake-up in the team that needed a moment to consolidate but the guys have been hand-picked to work together.
“They bond the team and, being a small team, sort of commando style, we manage to focus on the very important elements of the car and combine external experience with what we had inside – that has unlocked performance and then we’re very very careful with changing the car because they’re so finicky.
“You change a tiny little bit and, suddenly, don’t understand the car anymore. I’ve even heard James Allison (of Mercedes) who is probably the engineer of the engineers, who said it feels as if these cars, if you push them too much, they don’t give you the lap time.”
But just how much pushback was there from the existing regime? After all, settling into a steady life propping up the rear of the F1 field surely led to a lack of dynamicism – how did the staff at Faenza react to having new leaders come in with revolution in mind?
“Change is difficult. Human beings don’t like change, especially if two guys like Laurent and myself are coming in and defining a new norm and inviting everyone to join you on a journey,” he said.
“There will always be people who will say no and say ‘We’ve always done it like this, why would I change?’ but I think we were very clear to them in that respect.
“Change management – one of the few things I learned in university was a recipe for change management from one of the professors and he said it’s the ‘Four I principle’.
“If you want to change, you have to first inform people, then you have to involve them in the project, then you can integrate them, and then you can start innovating.
“That’s what we did and, by following that process, you easily identify the people who are willing to follow and those who don’t. So, with those, when we sat down, we said, ‘Look, that’s the journey, the train has left the station, there’s another stop down the road here – you join or you don’t join.’”
It’s an approach that seems to have paid off almost immediately. VCARB occupies sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship, meaning it’s the leader of the lower midfield. While 37 points down on Aston Martin in fifth place, there have been signs of being able to compete with the Silverstone-based squad, and Bayer believes the ship has been steadied after the speculation of a sale.
“We have some strategic objectives and, as long as we tick those boxes, there’s absolutely no reason to not think that this team has a bright future,” he said.
“The simplest argument is that Red Bull, as a company, everyone has a passion for motorsport. The whole country of Austria, Red Bull in Austria, they love motorsport.
“F1 has gone through this transition, which is tremendous. What happened is also that these teams are representing equity value, something that never was the case. Teams have been sold for $1, teams have been sold for $150 million, but then you have seen last year’s evaluations when Alpine brought investors in, where they basically said, ‘Well, we think the team is worth 900 million or a billion’.
“That’s real value. I think, if you were to go to market procedures, our team would be way north of a billion. What does it mean with everything – growth rate, United States still growing, Visa joining the journey, a Hollywood movie coming out next year, and new regulations coming out? For these teams, the trajectory is very clear… if it’s a billion today, it will be two in two years. Why would you sell that? At the same time, there’s the passion, and the opportunity for young drivers, so it’s all there.”
Weathering the transition to ‘VCARB’ after previously strong brand identities
Over the winter, the former AlphaTauri squad generated quite a lot of headlines due to its chosen identity for the future. While most sponsorship deals keep a team’s identity at its heart, VCARB chose to create its new identity around the sponsors that were coming on board for 2024.
As a result, it led to the somewhat clumsy team name Visa Cash App RB F1 team. While the RB initially didn’t officially stand for anything, the team’s registered company name in Italy is ‘Racing Bulls’, and this has led the Italian squad to lean into that identity in the months since.
With confusion amongst fans (and even publications) over what exactly to call the team in early 2024, the most widely-accepted nomenclature has become ‘VCARB’, and Bayer said he was never in doubt that it would catch on in time.
“I was convinced it would, you know? It was not an easy start,” he said.
“But we see a lot of traction now and I’m super pleased because, to give you an idea, in Melbourne, all our merchandising was sold out. Like nothing, you wouldn’t find a single shirt anymore. So we’re selling out merchandising – that was certainly the Ricciardo effect. But the same happened in Japan. I had people contacting us and talking to me in the subway, in the metro, in Japan. ‘Like wow, something’s happening’!
“Those people are all like ‘VCARB, VCARB, VCARB!’ but a lot of them call us Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, but I think the fans made up their mind to call us VCARB which we’re super-happy with.
“We had an amazing opportunity with Visa. Visa is one of the leading brands in sports marketing, everyone on the planet knows Visa.
“Visa’s president and CEO was in Monaco and he said ‘Peter, everything we do, we do long-term, we do big. We do the FIFA World Cup, we do the Olympic Games, we do NFL, and we do Visa Formula 1’.
“So they wanted to have that exposure, and then they wanted to bring in partner brand Cash App, and so we have Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula 1 team.
“I was like ‘I’m gonna have to go to the gym to have more space on the shirt!’ So that’s where the whole abbreviation came from. But now the fans made up their mind- it’s VCARB, which I personally like a lot!”
Peter Bayer embracing the spirit of competition after FIA years
Bayer joined Red Bull after a period of gardening leave after a spell as the FIA’s secretary-general, having joined the governing body under Jean Todt’s presidency. Playing a critical role in the development of all the current regulation rulebooks, including the financial regulations introduction, his background also includes working with the International Olympic Committee and managing the commercial interests in world-class sailing series.
But Bayer’s VCARB appointment places him at the heart of Formula 1 competition, with the Austrian responsible for transforming the fortunes of a Red Bull sister team that had fallen off the boil.
How is he enjoying the transition to a competitive life, after years being a gatekeeper?
“It’s night and day. It’s a constant roller coaster, but in a way that you’re part of this team,” he said.
“The only thing I can possibly think of that is similar to what we do is probably like a Navy SEALs team, a group of people who are sworn in to do something together because you’ve got 10 guys fighting each other down to the bones here.
“You go to build everything up yourself, the team, your hopes, your spirits, you’re trying to get into that fighting spirit. Then you have the fight and you either have that joy of winning, or the agony of losing.
“It keeps us rolling and I love that emotional side of it. While, at the FIA, you have to be balanced all weekend long. You have to listen to everything and have to maintain that neutral approach.
“So I’m loving it!”
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