Red Bull snap up exciting 17-year-old champion in Driver Academy refresh
The Red Bull F1 factory, located in Milton Keynes in the UK.
Red Bull has added another fresh racing talent to their junior team in the form of Italian Formula 4 champion Kacper Sztuka.
The Red Bull Junior Team has a successful track record of developing top Formula 1 talent, multi-time World Champions Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel coming into F1 through the Red Bull programme, with Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon also among the long list.
In recent years though, the pool of young talent has been surprisingly dry by Red Bull’s standards.
Red Bull reward Kacper Sztuka for stellar campaign
Liam Lawson provided a much-needed spark for the Red Bull junior ranks with his stand-in F1 2023 appearances at AlphaTauri, Red Bull’s F1 junior team, following a hand injury suffered by Daniel Ricciardo at Zandvoort, but Red Bull’s crop of 2023 Formula 2 stars have struggled to impress, with team boss Christian Horner teasing a thinning out of the ranks.
And as part of the restructure elsewhere, new AlphaTauri CEO Peter Bayer confirmed in a meeting with Polish media that their 17-year-old racing prospect Szutka had joined the Red Bull junior ranks.
“You know that he is joining our Red Bull junior academy?” Bayer said of Sztuka to the assembled media.
It seemed that positive piece of news had caught those in the room by surprise.
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Sztuka is already very familiar to Red Bull, having delivered a sensational end to the 2023 Italian F4 campaign to deny another of their juniors, Arvid Lindblad, the title.
Lindblad looked to have the title in the bag, only for Sztuka to reel off eight wins in the final nine races to become Italian F4 champion.
Sztuka also added the 2023 Formula Winter Series title to his CV.
Red Bull recently announced the additions of Spanish youngster Pepe Marti and Germany’s Tim Tramnitz as part of their Junior Team shake-up, the programme overseen by Helmut Marko.
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