Toro Rosso

Interesting facts

Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz bought the struggling Minardi team at the end of 2005 and immediately rebranded it Scuderia Toro Rosso. The name was deliberately Italian: 'toro rosso' is Italian for 'red bull,' and 'scuderia' is the traditional Italian term for a racing stable, as used by Ferrari - under the terms of the acquisition, the team's base stayed in Minardi's old home of Faenza, Italy. Toro Rosso functioned as Red Bull's junior team, with the explicit purpose of developing promising young drivers for a step up to the senior team. The team's brightest moment came on 14 September 2008 at the Italian Grand Prix, when 21-year-old Sebastian Vettel took pole and won in wet conditions - the first win of both his career and the team's. That Monza triumph remained the team's only race win across its entire fourteen-year history. Following its final entry at the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the team continued from 2020 as Scuderia AlphaTauri, to promote Red Bull's fashion label of the same name. Toro Rosso's Formula 1 history ran from 2006 to 2019, 14 seasons in total as an Italian team. The team scored a total of 500 constructors' championship points. The team's best season was 2008, when it finished 6th in the Constructors' Championship with 39 points.