20 years of Red Bull: The 'unplanned' team that took over F1

“It was very ‘British’ back then,” he recalls. “It had some good people, but it was clearly a midfield team.

“There was a long distance between Detroit and Milan Keynes, and long distances to sign off big decisions.”

Klien managed one points finish in the whole of 2004, Webber clocking a handful more. After five seasons featuring a lot of pain and not many high points, Ford made the decision to jettison its flawed F1 endeavour for 2005.

Red Bull had previously owned 60% of Sauber but had since sold up, and wasn’t entertaining the idea of buying a full blown team, so Klien says.

“It’s funny, a couple of months Marko was telling me that it was only because of me [being at Jaguar] that they saw the opportunity to buy that team,” he says.

“It wasn’t really the plan to start their own team. But when they found out they could buy Jaguar – for $1 – pretty quickly they came to the conclusion they should do it.”

Klien says that the change of management, with Tony Purnell and managing director David Pitchforth removed in favour of a 31-year-old Christian Horner, had an instant effect.

“It was like a fresh breeze coming,” he remembers. “It probably took a little while to have all the team members behind the vision that this Austrian guy from Salzburg has for a Milton Keynes based-squad.

“But there was a good energy in the team, especially scoring points straight away from the first race in Melbourne. Luckily we had a good car!”

With Coulthard replacing Webber, he and Klien took fourth and seventh on the team’s debut at the 2005 Australian GP.

It’s own Red Bulletin publication features a typical Coulthard quip on his new boss’s reaction: “I remember Christian giving me a hug like I’d never been hugged before… by a man anyway!”

The team would score 34 points in its first year in 2005, some improvement on Jaguar’s nine from the previous season.

However, things were changing off the track too, as Horner explained to Motor Sport in 2012.

“The Red Bull recipe for having a good time had arrived in the paddock,” he said. “That came from Dietrich. Inside the stiff, corporate environment that F1 had become, he wanted to display the core values of Red Bull, wanted his team to be non-conformist.

“The Energy Station motor home, which arrived at the first European race of the year, was his idea.

“Dietrich wanted to inject fun, give good access to the drivers, and allow them to say what they liked without PR-speak limitations. Even DC grew designer stubble and stopped talking corporate-speak.

“Dietrich wanted the team to be successful, but in a Red Bull way: because it’s no good having fun at the back of the grid. You need to be winners. In that we were every bit as serious as any other team.”

Red Bull has often played slightly fast and loose with its driver choices, not afraid to fire, hire and shuffle its lineup at short notice.

For 2005, the team decided initially to alternate every few races between Klien and its new rookie charge, Tonio Liuzzi. It was tricky for both drivers.

“It was a very bad decision from the team, but it was coming from Marko basically,” Klien says.

“You have to share the car, share the testing, you get half the mileage. You see how difficult the situation was – you lose that momentum.”

Liuzzi was eventually shunted into the new Toro Rosso junior team for 2007 and ’08, while Klien lasted until three races from the end of ’06 when he was let go by the team.

Red Bull throwing its drivers in at the deep end and then pushing them to the limit, as experienced by Klien, could also be attested to by Sébastien Bourdais, Jaime Algesuari, Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon, among others.

As Newey joined for 2006 though, the team gradually hauled itself up the F1 ranks, and with the new technical regulations in 2009 launched to the front, almost beating Brawn to the title with race wins for Webber and new signing Sebastian Vettel. From 2010 to 2013 the German and team claimed a historic four consecutive title sweeps.

“It was like a big F3 team” Mark Webber

Webber had returned to Milton Keynes for 2007 onwards to replace Klien – he explains how a team that upset the grand prix norm managed to have such sustained success, particularly in contrast to the bloated corporate ways of the Jaguar days.

“The goal-setting, the focus on the details [were crucial],” he says. “It was like a big F3 team – it had a very small group in terms of the decision-making process and that was a very powerful weapon in its armoury.

“And when you’ve got that lean-mean decision process, that put us in good stead to fast track towards awesome results.

“We were also very balanced in terms of management. We had Dietrich overarching everything.

“Helmut was pivotal obviously, Adrian had a great feel about the team and and Christian’s stamina levels are very high – he put a big shift in to the team’s performance year after year after year.”

The outspoken Horner has often cut a contentious figure in the paddock, his notoriety only heightened by apparently becoming the villain everyone loves to hate through Netflix’s Drive to Survive series. However, some of those that have raced for him feel it’s clear why his team has been successful.

“Christian’s good at motivating people, and he’s also a racer,” says Webber, something echoed by Klien: “Christian understands drivers,” he says.

After its stunning title success with Vettel, the team went through some difficult years as it struggled with the Renault hybrid engine. But the group stayed together, and has become serial winners once more with Verstappen now a three-time world champion.

With Newey now leaving the team – in light of the fallout surrounding allegations made against Horner – and the squad preparing for a new self-produced, ironically Ford-badged engine from 2026, the 20-year mark feels like the end of an era.

Horner intimates that the glittering Goodwood celebration would have seemed highly unlikely when he first began the team with Mateschitz in 2005 – not that he’s had much time to think about it.

“It’s not very often you get a chance to actually reflect, you’re always looking forward in this business, not backwards,” he says.

“It’s a special moment seeing all the guys lined up, and seeing those guys run up the hill too.

“I think we just do things a bit differently. We’ve been a bit of a maverick. We play our music louder. We’ve never been afraid to take on a challenge.

“The key has been the people, the spirit, the culture. We’re tremendously excited for the next chapter.”