Visa Cash App Racing Bulls has spent two years building something no other Formula 1 team has attempted.
The team has a structured programme that invites its youngest fans through the garage door and gives them real work to do.
The Creator Platform has put a graffiti artist to work on the team’s São Paulo garage, drawn DJs from its own fanbase to play team parties and plenty more in between.
This month VCARB embedded an emerging fashion designer inside HUGO’s design operation to create Pirelli British Grand Prix outfits for Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad. Thousands of applicants now respond to each call for entries.
The thinking, according to Chief Executive Officer Peter Bayer, traces back to the identity discussions that followed his arrival, when the future of the team then known as AlphaTauri was under review.
Red Bull’s decision was to keep both teams – and to make its second outfit clearly distinct from Oracle Red Bull Racing and everyone else on the grid, building a commercially attractive, financially sustainable operation.
With the youngest driver pairings in F1 – Lawson and Lindblad today, Isack Hadjar and Yuki Tsunoda before them – the team saw an authentic route to a generation of fans it felt the sport had welcomed but never truly engaged.
“Thanks to all the work that Liberty and Netflix and social media and the whole ecosystem in Formula One actually does, they all start following F1. But nobody really took care of them in a meaningful way,” Bayer told Sector.
“We’ve seen a study recently where it says that 65 per cent of all Gen Z, they love to get proactively involved in a sport or series that they follow.
“So we said, ‘we need to go further, we cannot only do every now and then a funny lip sync social media post. We have to actually open up as a team and we have to invite these people in, and we have to not only invite them in but also go outside and meet them where they are.'”
The programme’s origins were modest. It began with DJs – the team choosing to find talent within its own followership rather than book established names for its race weekend parties – before a young designer’s unsolicited ideas for improving the team kit opened the door to fashion.
In São Paulo, the team handed its garage to local graffiti artist Maria. Each project since has followed the same logic, and the volume of response has transformed what the platform now is.
“When we launch a project, we have thousands of people actually joining the call for action and the programmes, and they send in ideas,” Bayer said.
“It’s almost like an effort to democratise the sport in a way and make Formula One more accessible.”
The programme is deliberately localised. Red Bull’s market teams identify the creative scene that fits each race – music in Austin and fashion in London, for example – before the output is amplified globally through the team’s channels.
“The funny thing I always say is that sports and culture are these two universal languages,” Bayer said.
“Everybody understands the race, whether you speak English or Austrian or Chinese, you will understand the race result.
“Also, everybody understands the beat. You switch the music on and people will start dancing, or you have a nice piece of fashion or content that works globally.”
Crucially, participants are paid for their work once agreements are signed – a detail Bayer frames within Red Bull’s philosophy of giving people wings, and one that separates the platform from the unpaid exposure economy that dominates much of sport’s engagement with young creatives.
The results are showing up in F1’s own fan research. Bayer said the team’s content was rated excellent by 60 per cent of fans in the sport’s most recent monitoring report, comfortably clear of the chasing pack – and he believes the team’s positioning makes that lead a natural one.
“First of all, we are the trailblazers, and Formula One is very much about the one who’s pushing first. I think we do get credit for that from the fans because we do it in an authentic way,” he said.
“We probably have a slight advantage in terms of the fan base and also the sponsors, the partners and our whole ecosystem.
“We’re not selling Ferraris, obviously! So it probably comes a bit more natural. I think Mercedes is coming in now with Kimi Antonelli around 34, 35 per cent, just to give you an idea. And the others are actually below that.”
We are the trailblazers, and Formula One is very much about the one who’s pushing first. I think we do get credit for that from the fans because we do it in an authentic way.
Peter Bayer
Not that Bayer measures everything in percentages. Maria’s garage takeover in Brazil generated little formal media output, but its value showed up in the paddock instead – rival teams’ staff stopping to ask what was happening.
“The Creator Platform is actually not something we’re doing to create content. We’re literally doing it to get these people involved,” added Bayer.
“Then it’s actually them who are telling the story. They are going out and telling their friends. They are going out and activating with influencers. Young people writing to us saying, this is simply the coolest team on the grid.”
Silverstone sewn up
The platform’s most recent creator is Oliver Kearney, the London College of Fashion graduate selected from shortlisted portfolios to design British GP looks for Lawson and Lindblad.
Alongside HUGO’s design teams in London and Metzingen, his brief was to create looks rooted in UK streetwear culture that would resonate with the next generation of F1 fans.
“It was about how I can marry the ideas together of the modern streetwear elements with the classic British heritage that Silverstone is known for,” Kearney told Sector.
“A lot of the time it was looking at the racing details from both Arvid and Liam’s suits, and how I could use those details within each garment to create looks that feel on brand – but it doesn’t feel like a costume almost.”
Kearney met both drivers at the start of the design process, incorporating their personal styles and preferences before overseeing development through to production at HUGO’s German headquarters – a level of creative control he admits he had not expected.
“I was apprehensive that although I had set ideas on what I would like, I pictured that maybe these ideas might change or that HUGO might have some feedback of stuff that wasn’t feasible,” he said.
“To be honest, I was quite surprised to come to the realisation that it was really flexible. It was a bit strange having that much freedom with such large companies.”
The finished outfits debuted in the Silverstone paddock, where Kearney watched the drivers enter wearing his work – the culmination of a two-month process he describes as surreal.
Both looks will be auctioned on F1 Authentics this week to raise funds for spinal cord research foundation Wings for Life.
For Bayer, the pipeline of applicants and the response from the fanbase are evidence the strategy is compounding – and he sees the team’s dual identity reflected in its leadership.
“We’re a hardcore racing team. We’re out there to upset the giants, but we add a bit of fun and creativity to what we do,” he said.
“It’s done by young people for young people. And that’s the true secret to the success of the platform.”
Always being a long-time F1 fan and a fan of fashion, being able to see the opportunity come about where I can combine my two main interests together, it’s crazy.
Oliver Kearney
Meanwhile, Kearney’s advice for other young creatives considering the platform is unequivocal.
“Always being a long-time F1 fan and a fan of fashion, being able to see the opportunity come about where I can combine my two main interests together, it’s crazy,” he said.
“Being able to promote my own narrative and designs on such a great platform, it’s just an unreal opportunity.
“Anybody that’s looking to apply for it in any department – because it’s not just fashion design, it’s other design backgrounds – getting the opportunity to apply, I can’t rate it enough.”
