Tudor Enters Formula One As Sponsor Of The Visa Cash App RB Team
The newly-named F1 team will fly the Tudor shield for the 2024 World Championship season.
It's a great, great day for watch fans who love F1, as Tudor has just announced they will be sponsoring the Visa Cash App RB team for the 2024 season. Recently rebranded, the team was formerly known as AlphaTauri and is one of two teams in Formula 1 that is owned by Red Bull GmbH. For this upcoming season of F1, the team has been retooled with the hopes of greater competition, and part of that is a full rebranding with Visa, a brand that also sponsors the championship-winning Red Bull team.
The Visa Cash App RB team will retain the same drivers who took the wheel for AlphaTauri last year, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda. In terms of 2023 standings, AlphaTauri placed 8th out of 10 teams (with 25 points), and the drivers ranked 17 and 14, respectively, of the 22 drivers active last season. The newly-named team is slated to unveil the new car – presumably along with its Tudor-inclusive livery – on February 8th in Las Vegas.
The team can trace its roots as far back as 1979, when it hit the scene as Minardi. In 2006, Red Bull bought the team and rebranded to Toro Rosso. That name lasted until 2019, when the team was again rebranded, this time to AlphaTauri. This sort of sell-and-rebrand pattern is not uncommon in Formula 1, and as a medium-intensity fan of Formula 1, I'm thrilled to see a watch brand like Tudor get into the mix. And, despite the somewhat awkward name (just "Racing Bulls" would have been cool), I think the new Visa Cash App RB team represents an interesting gamble for the well-known watch brand. Essentially functioning as the sister team to the entirely dominant Red Bull team, the Visa Cash App RB team represents an underdog in the world of Formula 1.
Furthermore, while both drivers haven't exactly had especially remarkable recent seasons, both are fan-favorite personalities, and both have seen a spike in their notoriety thanks to the past few seasons of Drive To Survive (Netflix's Formula 1 reality/documentary show), which enters its 6th season with a premiere on February 23rd.
Interestingly, while this is Tudor's first foray into modern Formula 1, it's not the brand's first connection to Red Bull – especially when it comes to racing. This past June, Tudor announced a partnership with Alinghi Red Bull Racing, an America's Cup racing team. That partnership brought us two new carbon-derived takes on the Pelagos (including the line's first chronograph).
