In 1989 Sir Jackie Stewart’s son Paul started a Formula 3 open wheel programme with his own team Paul Stewart Racing which ran two cars. After being consistent championship contenders the team graduated to Formula 3000 and after a season Paul decided his future lay in team management and his team won six Formula 3 championships with Gil de Ferran, Kelvin Burt, Jan Magnussen, Ralph Fairman Jr, Jonny Kane and Mario Haberfeld.

In 1996 Paul Stewart and his father founded Stewart Grand Prix with Sir Jackie convincing the Ford board in Detroit to underwrite a V10 engine programme with Cosworth. The team one the 1999 German Grand Prix in it’s third season before being sold to Ford who rebranded the team Jaguar for the 2000 season.

Jaguar Racing’s only success was two third place finishes in 5 years and Ford concluded there was no point continuing the programme after 2004 when the ambitious Red Bull energy drinks company stepped in to buy the team for the 2005 season.

In the first four years of operation Red Bull Racing scored just three 3rd place finishes but things started to change once they hired über aerodynamicist Adrian Newey from McLaren for the 2007 season by 2009 Mark Webber and new boy Sebastian Vettel had scored six victories between them and Red Bull Racing finished 2009 second in the constructors championship with Vettel 2nd in the drivers Championship.

From 2010 to 2012 Sebastian Vettel scored a further 21 Grand Prix victories and three consecutive World Drivers Championships six further victories for Mark Webber, seen with the green flashes on his airbox camera, in the same period helped Red Bull Racing secure 3 consecutive World Constructors titles.

Clear favourites to win fourth consecutive titles in 2013 the only hiccup to their plans came at the beginning of the season when Red Bull Racing found the mandated tyres did not match their Renault powered RB9 as well as some of the other cars, however after various failures the mandated tyres reverted to 2012 spec and Sebastian and Red Bull Racing never looked back ending the season with 13 Grand Prix wins including the last nine of the season won consecutively to score their 4th consecutive World Championships respectively. Mark managed just five second place finishes before retiring from Formula One to join Porsche’s new sports car programme.

For 2014 Australian Daniel Ricciardo will replace his Mark Webber as Sebastian’s team mate and the signs from testing are that Red Bull Racing may well struggle to get their new Renault turbo powered RB10 hybrid race car to the finish of it’s first race in Australia on Sunday.

You can follow the fortunes of the Red Bull Racing team on their website linked here, their facebook page linked here and twitter feed linked here.

On testing form the 2014 season could be the most open yet my gut feeling is that the Championships will be Hamiltons’s and Mercedes F1’s to loose but what ever their problems now I expect Red Bull Racing to come back strong towards the end of the season for what should be a thrilling finale with the funny little double dose points.

Wishing all GALPOT readers a thrilling 2014 F1 season over here at GALPOT tyres we are ready to Go ! Go ! Go ! as Murray Walker used to say.

Thanks for joining me on this “Four Time” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now. iing