Helmut Marko on how Red Bull looks for young talent

Participating in the Red Bull youth program is the dream of many aspiring racers. The requirements for participants are very strict, failure to achieve the set goals leads to exclusion from the program, but in return the company finances a career, trains and gives them the chance to go all the way from karting to Formula 1. Helmut Marko told how Red Bull searches for young talents and gives them the chance to make a career.

Helmut Marko: “Now everyone believes that if you follow Verstappen’s example and build a career on the same path, your son will grow into a new Max, but a lot has changed. Before Verstappen, everyone left the kart track for a café when it started to rain. But as soon as Max became kart champion, everyone noticed one thing: when it rained, there was only one driver on the kart track: Verstappen. Now everything is different: nobody sits in a café when it rains.

People are confident that they can follow Verstappen’s path by simply copying him. But we are not looking for a new Verstappen. We are looking for a new world champion. When Sebastian Vettel left us, we were not looking for a new Vettel. We saw Max and decided we wanted to work with him.

We have done the calculations. Every year, about a thousand youngsters start a career in karting, and on average, only one of them will reach Formula 1, and only if they are lucky. The selection is very serious and tough, and the chance of success is relatively low.

We are looking for riders who are capable of winning the Grand Prix. This is the goal: these are the kind of riders we are looking for. To win a title, many factors have to come together.

The main difference between today and previous years is that we now have much more telemetry data at our disposal and we can learn a lot about a driver before we even see him on track.

I prefer to watch the racers on the track. The difference is in the way they react during their first or second lap in a new car. The ability to handle the car is immediately apparent.

Thanks to telemetry, they can now learn something in twenty to forty laps. But for me, the first reaction to an unknown car is important. It is also important how they deal with fast corners. The hairpin is a fairly easy corner, so it is in the fast corners that you see the difference between the riders.

We are talking about the fact that the age of riders is constantly decreasing. In our program there were young people who achieved fantastic success in karting and became champions, but did not achieve success in the “formulas”. There were people who became champions in Formula 4, but after moving to Formula 3 they were not competitive.

Junior racing series are a natural selection. Some people can cope with higher speeds and overloads, while others can’t. Some have to spend two or three years in one series, which is a long time for our purpose of finding a driver who will be competitive in Formula 1.

We always look to the future. What will happen in three years? Where will Daniel Ricciardo end up? Where will Liam Lawson go? Where will Isaac Hajjar be if he continues to perform as he is now? And if he continues like this, we will have to find a place for him in Formula 1.”