[Scarlet_Rider]

Dietrich Mateschitz, the billionaire whose Red Bull energy drinks business has grown into one of the biggest sponsors in motorsport, has died at the age of 78, following a long illness.

Red Bull’s presence in Formula 1 alone includes two teams: the eponymous championship-winning squad and its sister squad based in Italy, named after the company’s fashion label AlphaTauri.

It also runs Junior Teams to develop future motor racing talent in single-seaters and off-road motorsport. The brand’s logos can be found across many other championships on two and four wheels.

Mateschitz, who co-founded Red Bull in 1984 with Chaleo Yoovidhya after discovering the recipe for the drink in Thailand, began using motorsport to promote the brand soon after it went on sale. Gerhard Berger became the first driver to be sponsored by the company in 1987.

Red Bull increased its presence in F1 when it took over as the title sponsor of the Sauber Formula 1 team in 1995. By the early noughties Mateschitz was looking elsewhere and after considering a takeover of Jordan he opted to buy the Jaguar team, which Ford had put up for sale in 2004. He asked Arden team founder Christian Horner, who had taken Vitantonio Liuzzi to the Formula 3000 title that year, to meet him in Salzburg and offered him the job of running his new F1 team.

While Horner built Red Bull Racing into a championship-winning force, Mateschitz pounced on the opportunity to buy another F1 team the following year. He transformed Minardi into Toro Rosso – Italian for ‘Red Bull’ – to serve as a finishing school for its future champions. By 2010 Sebastian Vettel, an early graduate of Toro Rosso, had become the first driver to win the world championship in a Red Bull.

That began a string of title wins for Vettel and Red Bull which wasn’t halted until 2014, when new power unit rules were introduced to F1 and Mercedes came to the fore. Red Bull finally ended their uninterrupted title run last year when Max Verstappen beat Lewis Hamilton to the world championship in a controversial finale.

Verstappen took his second title in dominant fashion this year, clinching the crown with four races to spare at Suzuka. Red Bull is poised to win its first constructors championship since 2013 at the Circuit of the Americas this weekend.

Mateschitz has only occasionally appeared in person to witness his team’s success, and had not been seen in an F1 paddock for several years. Widely considered one of the world’s wealthiest individuals, his fortune was estimated at being in excess of $15 billion (£13bn).

Red Bull confirmed Mateschitz’s passing ahead of qualifying for the United States Grand Prix, where the team can claim their fifth F1 constructors’ title.

Mateschitz founded Red Bull in the mid-1980s and turned the energy drink into a market leader, while showcasing the brand through a range of extreme sports.

Having initially been involved in F1 with Sauber in the 1990s and early 2000s, Mateschitz bought the Jaguar squad at the end of 2004 and rebranded it as a full-blown Red Bull team for the 2005 season.

He then bought the Minardi squad, renaming it Toro Rosso for 2006 and using the team as a vehicle to train promising drivers for the works Red Bull operation.

Steadily building up their operation over the following years, while signing the likes of design guru Adrian Newey and promoting the first of many Red Bull-backed drivers in Sebastian Vettel, pole positions, victories and world titles would ultimately flow.

Indeed, Vettel racked up four successive drivers’ titles from 2010 to 2013, with Red Bull also taking the constructors’ crowns in each of those years.

After a lean spell upon the arrival of F1’s turbo-hybrid era, a reunion with Honda led to another winning period, their latest star driver, Max Verstappen, claiming the 2021 and 2022 drivers’ titles, with the 2022 constructors’ set to follow.

As it stands, Red Bull have scored 79 pole positions, 89 race wins, six drivers’ titles and four constructors’ titles in F1.

Stefano Domenicali, President and CEO of Formula 1, said: “I am deeply saddened by the news that Dietrich Mateschitz, a hugely respected and much-loved member of the Formula 1 family has passed away.

“He was an incredible visionary entrepreneur and a man who helped to transform our sport and created the Red Bull brand that is known all around the world.

“I will miss him greatly, as will the whole community in Formula 1, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and the Red Bull and AlphaTauri teams at this very sad time.”

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner added: “It’s very, very sad. What a great man – he’s few of a kind. What he achieved and what he’s done for so many people around the world, across different sports, is second to none.

“So many of us have to be so grateful to him for the opportunities he’s provided and the vision he had, the strength of character [he had], and never being afraid to follow dreams, and chase dreams. That’s what he did here in F1, proving that you can make a difference.

“We’re just incredibly grateful for him, everything that he’s done, everything that he’s supported us with over the years. So many drivers, so many team members, so many people in this pit lane owe him so much.”

Asked what Verstappen’s recent title win would have meant to Mateschitz, Horner added: “Well, thankfully he got to see that. He was incredibly proud of the team, incredibly proud of everything we’ve done and have been achieving, and he’s been a passionate supporter and the backbone of everything that we do.”

Sources:
https://www.racefans.net/2022/10/22/...-dies-aged-78/
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/a...CZWYe3XwJ.html
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/a...RPbQAx79y.html