FEATURE: Red Bull Racing Factory Visit

 

Now look, I know what you're thinking.... lucky old Rob got to go to the Red Bull factory as a guest of TAG Heuer or Red Bull or some other generous benefactor... isn't life just cushty as a super-famous and important watch influencer? Well, no... haha,  you couldn't be more wrong. Because in actual fact I got to go to the Red Bull factory today because my amazing wife bought me/us (the outrageously expensive) tickets for Valentine's Day. 

Yes indeed, my wife is awesome!

And so on the morning of the 18th of March we headed off to Milton Keynes for a few hours of bumbling around the MK centre. Annoyingly the Goldsmiths was shut for refurbishment, but at least the TAG Heuer boutique was open and they had both the watches we were interested in seeing in stock - namely the green dial Dato and the new 'Polar Blue' Solargraph. I will write about these separately (because I desperately need content and Watches & Wonders is still so, so far away), but the TL:DR is that the Solargraph was disappointing while the Dato wasn't actually as bad as I expected it to be. Go figure...

Anyway, so we eventually made our way to the Red Bull factory for our 3pm appointment and after being guided by the gatehouse to park outside the building marked MK-7 we joined the queue of about 40 people waiting to take the same tour. I immediately clocked the massive Heuer 01 Carrera skeleton wallclock hanging on the wall behind reception, temporarily oblivious to the lanyard I was being handed (I still kinda wish I had bought one when I was offered it, but at £850 it seemed way too much at the time).

Having draped ourselves in tour guest passes, we were instructed to go through to the main foyer (containing another Heuer 01 wallclock) and a Red Bull decked out in a 2018 testing livery. The car had Daniel Ricciardo's name on it but for some reason there was a cardboard cut out of Sergio Perez standing next to it - I guess they didn't want the whole tour to be all about Max...

This livery was pretty cool actually and I got a really nice shot of the TAG Heuer logo on the side of the cockpit which I will post later. I hadn't been up close with a Formula 1 car for a little while and it still amazes me how big they are compared to the older cars of the 1980s. They are also a million times better built, I remember visiting the Donington Museum years ago and being horrified at how ramshackle the cars looked with riveted aluminium body panels and wings (though I can't help thinking aluminium wings were quite a good idea since they didn't disintegrate into a thousand tiny pieces of tyre slashing debris at the slightest impact!). 

Once it was established that all the tour guests had arrived we were shown through a door into a corridor lined with epic moments from Red Bull's Formula 1 history, starting with none other than Gerhard Berger who, in the 1980s, became the very first 'Red Bull Athlete'.

This led into a much larger room in which sat an impressive semi circle of Red Bull F1 cars, all of the cars in fact except the RB8, which is apparently the one they usually use for exhibitions (mainly because it has a good old V8 engine in it so it sounds like people still think Formula 1 cars are supposed to sound - that was a direct quote, haha).

We were allowed to mooch around all the cars (as long as we didn't lean on them or take photos of the back ends of the cars) and so the next fifteen minutes were spent tootling around from one car to the next, taking endless photos...

Well actually... the very first thing I did, like literally the first thing I did was to completely ignore the array of Formula 1 cars in front of me completely and pounce on our tour guide and pummel him for information about the Max Verstappen / Red Bull Formula 1 watch that was gifted to the employees at the factory. Poor Guy... he confirmed he had received one, but no he wasn't wearing it and he didn't think anyone at the factory was actually wearing them as they had all been taken home for safe keeping.

Rats! 

Unsurprisingly he couldn't tell me if it had a unique part number or not and he seemed quite perturbed that anyone would care about such a thing. I guess Guy isn't really a watch guy, hey. He did also mention that there was a ladies version, but I think what he meant was that the ladies who didn't want a 43mm Formula 1 were probably offered a standard Aquaracer or something, this would explain why there were 1275 pieces of the watch but there were nearer 1500 employees on site. I definitely don't think he meant there was a 'ladies' version of the celebration watch.

Anyway, I tried my best to get the info... hopefully we'll get it eventually. Guy even asked one of his colleagues (who I noticed was wearing the old 'Red Bull' Heuer 01 skeleton)

So I did what any sane person would do in the situation, and took a wrist shot of my orange dial Formula 1 in front of one of the more recent cars. You may remember Max wore this one for a few races a few years back, but of course he never had it on a bracelet - an upgrade I thoroughly recommend! 

All too soon we were gathered into three groups of about 13 people and despatched in different directions with our respective tour guides. From this point on you were not allowed to take photographs at all, or even have your phone out of your pocket - which is fair enough, after all we were seeing production work for 2024 cars so even if we didn't understand what we were looking at they definitely don't want photographs flying around and being posted for all to see on the internet. 

Over the next 90mins or so we got to see the electronics department, the CNC machines (engineering), the paintshop and the autoclaves where the carbon fibre parts are baked. We also got to see Red Bull's four 3D printers, which were very different to ones I'd seen previously in that whereas you usually expect the printer to deposit material onto the base plate to build up the part required, here the base of the machine was a tank of liquid plastic (£60,000 a time apparently) and the very top layer was 'solidified' by a laser before the base sank down a fraction of a millimetre and the process was repeated.

This meant that the part was actually formed under the surface, so all you could see in the hours and days that the process was running was the laser flicking across the surface. Once completed of course the base plate lifts up to reveal the completed component which is then cleaned up and painted black before being sent to the wind tunnel for testing. Nothing that is 3D printed actually ends up on the car itself, it is only used for making 60% models for the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel unfortunately is thirty minutes away (at least for the moment, Red Bull are just starting the process of building a new one on site) so we couldn't see that, but we did get to see the Red Bull trophy cabinet, which is just bonkers. This is the original cabinet you can see here, but with the team's ridiculous run of success over the past few years they quickly ran out of space, so they built more cabinets above the doors... 

It was actually a pity that the trophies are displayed like this as I would have loved to have been able to see them all properly, but that's just impossible. My photos really don't convey just how high these cabinets are, but take it from me they must be at least 20 feet up, if not more. They did have the World Constructors and World Drivers Championship trophies on display as well, and thankfully they were much more accessible.

These two are held by the team only for the duration of the year following the championships and have to be returned for presentation at the FIA gala in December. Though I'm guessing Red Bull are pretty sure they'll be back here next year too judging by the first two race results. 

Outside we saw Christian Horner and Adrian Newey's road cars and we were also shown the windows of their offices en-route to a different part of the factory. Speaking of Adrian Newey, I did briefly catch a glimpse of him leaving reception right at the end of the tour, well... more the back of his head than anything, but still! The most successful man in Formula 1. Ever!

The Hungarian GP trophy, broken on the podium by Lando Norris

Along the way we learned some interesting facts, and some myths were busted. For example the one about F1 teams using matt finish paint because it is less draggy. I always thought that one was a bit suspect, and it turns out it is actually cobblers. Red Bull just thought it looked better, so they did it and several other teams followed suit. Of course, maybe they thought that's why Red Bull did it, if so... that's hilarious.

We also learned that the team makes its own wheel nuts and these are only used once. Just think about that for a moment. So let's say it's a two stop race, that means you use twelve wheelnuts on each car, plus however many in practice and qualifying sessions. Well at least the same in the qualifying, maybe more as there's three sessions and you use either one or two sets per session. Plus three practice sessions... so let's take a guess at between 80 and 90 per weekend? Those wheelnuts cost £1000 each.

We also got to see 'Mission Control' where the engineers and technical personnel who can't attend the race (there is a limit of 60 crew per team for every race) sit to watch and contribute to strategic decision making. This looks a lot like NASA's 'Mission Control' and was in fact designed in conjuction with someone who came over from NASA to advise. 

Another building we visited is used to strip down the older cars that are used for exhibition runs, and so we saw several more cars including one in quite an advanced state of disassembly. This room also housed two Aston Martin Valkyries both of which were painted dark blue. One belongs to the designer Adrian Newey and the other to the late Dietrich Mateschitz's son Mark. Unfortunately Mark Mateschitz is apparently quite tall and the car is not really built for his frame, so Adrian was in the process of redesigning the interior to accommodate him.

Finally we got to see the space where the team practice their pitstops, and right there in the centre of the room was Max Verstappen's 2024 race car. This room also features several authentically sized pit garages where the mechanics can practice working on the cars in the limited space available. Also, on the walls above and opposite the garages were two Aquaracer wallclocks. In fact these things were ten a penny in the factory, it seemed like around every corner you would spot one... so cool. And there was a Monaco wallclock on the wall behind the two Valkyries too (and another Heuer 01 wallclock in the gift shop). 

And then we were walked back to reception where we exchanged our lanyards for goodie bags. Ours contained a Red Bull baseball cap, a Red Bull key ring, a super cool Red Bull branded drinks bottle and a special 'Max Verstappen' can of Red Bull, all contained in a nice Red Bull rucksack kind of thing with string shoulder straps. It really was a great experience, and I am very grateful to my wife for taking us there. If you can afford it I'd definitely recommend it - it's certainly something that will live long in the memory and experiences like this are priceless really.

Hopefully I will be able to find out some more info on the Red Bull / Max Verstappen Champions watch and I will update you on that accordingly. 

Below are the rest of the pictures from the day.