Ricciardo: VCARB isn't a junior team anymore

Visa Cash App RB F1 team, started life as Toro Rosso back in 2006 when Red Bull founder, the late Dietrich Mateschitz bought the struggling Minardi team and turned it into a training ground for junior Red Bull drivers.

In 2020, the team was given a major rebranding and became Scuderia AlphaTauri, a marketing platform for Red Bull's fashion brand - AlphaTauri. At that time the team claimed that they would be a sister team rather than a junior team to Red Bull Racing.

However that exercise did not really deliver and at the end of 2023, the team was given another rebrand to become Visa Cash App RB F1 Team, VCARB, RB, or whatever you want to call it.

The latest rebrand saw long serving team boss Franz Tost step down with dual management - CEO Peter Bayer and Team Principal Laurent Mekies - installed in his place.

Ricciardo, who returned to to the team midseason in 2023, replacing the struggling Nyck de Vries, insisted the atmosphere within VCARB is not that of a junior team.

Quoted by Formula 1's Official Website over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, he said: "It [the team] does feel different, and I think it's easy to kind of rebrand it and say we’ve got a new look and with this and that, but your actions have to follow.

"And I think Laurent, Peter, Alan [Permane who joined from Alpine], a lot of guys that have come in have done that. It's not that what was happening in the past with Franz, in that example, wasn't the right thing, but a change sometimes is good.

"You bring in new ideas," Ricciardo went on. "They've all spent time in other teams, organizations, and yeah, it's just a new way of looking at things. I think that in itself and their intentions and the way they go about it has made people kind of stand up and say, alright, this isn't a junior team anymore.

"We're making, kind of, big boy decisions, and we're taking risks and we're setting targets and high targets, and ones that we realistically think that we can attain," he revealed.

Ricciardo was adamant, that he wouldn't have felt comfortable had VCARB felt like a junior team, he added: "So, it's cool. It's cool to see it. I'm probably too, in a way, like honest in myself that if it felt like a junior team still, I wouldn't feel comfortable here.

"I'm 35 now. So, I think I would feel a bit out of place, and I certainly don't, so I think that's also a good way to probably comprehend it," the eight-time grand prix winner concluded.

Ricciardo's claims are somehow bizarre, as VCARB in their latest incarnation have become more reliant on Red Bull Racing for car parts. Granted, many teams on the grid outsource car parts from other teams, but what of the driver decisions at VCARB?

Christian Horner and Helmut Marko are the ones effectively calling the shots when it comes to the drivers the Faenza-based squad hires.

Ricciardo himself was places at VCARB after a test in a Red Bull at Silverstone back in 2023 with the hope that he would recapture his form in case the need to replace Sergio Perez rise.

How does that mean VCARB are not a junior team anymore?