“Absolute Clown Show”: Outrage Erupts With Accusations of FIA Selling out to Red Bull With Disastrous AlphaTauri Deal

AlphaTauri exited F1 when the team got rebranded into Visa Cash App RB after the end of the 2023 season. But the name is in the news once again, because the FIA announced a deal, announcing a partnership with the Red Bull backed fashion brand which runs from 2024 to 2026. This partnership has certainly raised eyebrows in F1 forums with some more outrage against the FIA and Red Bull.

The FIA is very excited about the news and it reflects how significant this partnership is. This means that the AlphaTauri branding will now be present across motorsport paddocks, not just F1. The FIA’s official Twitter (now X) account posted on the announcement, saying,

“We are thrilled to announce the partnership between AlphaTauri and the FIA as the first Official Clothing Partner, from 2024 to 2026. Get ready for a fusion of automotive technology and high fashion, redefining style in the world of motorsport!”

Just years ago, AlphaTauri came to F1 as a novel brand to fans, after Red Bull rebranded the Toro Rosso team in 2020. While it was not a hit, the brand made its place and people liked it to some extent, despite it being the Austrian team’s sister brand.

It is also pertinent to note that this is not the first time AlphaTauri will be part of the F1 realm in this domain. In 2021, they signed a deal with Formula 1 (not the FIA). It  made them their official clothing partner.

In 2023, Red Bull again decided to revamp its sister F1 team’s branding. The resultant name has been a mouthful of chaos – Visa Cash App RB or V-CARB in short. This already had fans raging over the champion team on why it made such a sponsorship-focused rebrand of its second team.

Meanwhile, the resumption and extension of the technical collaboration between Red Bull and V-CARB, has also got a lot of criticism in the F1 paddock. Add to that, AlphaTauri, Red Bull’s fashion arm partnering with the FIA is just making matters worse in terms of fans’ opinion.

Fans label the AlphaTauri-FIA partnership as a “conflict of interest” for Red Bull

Several fans have reacted with frustration and anger to FIA’s AlphaTauri partnership. The sentiments on social media forums suggest how this could be a potential conflict of interest situation.

Many fans have been complaining about how the FIA has been allegedly favoring Red Bull in the past few years. This is a natural sentiment against any champion team, and so it has been with Red Bull. Though, now some fans will double down on this by saying that the FIA officials will be wearing “clothes made by Red Bull”.

A fan named Rob Myers, lambasted the partnership as an “absolute clown show” by citing how partnering with a team’s private fashion arm upholds “fairness”?

One fan also contrasted this situation with the Susie Wolff saga. Given how that investigation was under the pretext of a conflict of interest, fans may also question if this is a similar case for Red Bull’s fashion brand.

Already there was a lot of criticism against Red Bull owning two teams. The entire rebrand of RB has also enraged fans. To top that, even the FIA has been under persistent attack for its inconsistency in race decisions since Abu Dhabi 2021.

Overall, it seems as though FIA and Red Bull can’t catch a break with anything they do. A lot of it could have to do with the dominance of the latter, especially after they won 19 out of 22 races in 2023.

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• AlphaTauri
• FIA
• Red Bull