New F1 team names involve money, marketing and lots of syllables

Formula 1 has two new team names this season, following a trend in the sport to focus on marketing: Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team and Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber.

Sauber motorsport has been racing under various names since 1993, most recently as Alfa Romeo. It will adopt the name Stake for this season and next, with Audi taking over in 2026.

“Before the arrival of Audi, we felt it was important to present ourselves with this new identity and establish a commercial partnership,” said Alessandro Alunni Bravi, the representative of the Stake team. “The Sauber Group has been in Formula 1 for 32 years, but this does not mean that we have forgotten what Sauber is. It means that we wanted to present ourselves as something new, fresh and different over the next two seasons, to help us attract new audiences.”

AlphaTauri, which entered Formula 1 in 2006 as Toro Rosso, will be called Visa Cash App.

“The head of sponsorship at Visa, Andrea Fairchild, said it’s a mouthful,” said Peter Bayer, the team’s CEO. “The reality is that we said from the beginning last year that we would get closer to the Red Bull family.”

The RB stands for Racing Bulls, a reference to the aircraft collection known as Flying Bulls that belonged to the team’s founder, Dietrich Mateschitz.

“It’s a good fit,” Bayer said. “But then we had a big problem because we had Visa, one of the biggest brands in the world, and Cash App, one of the most spectacular brands in the financial world, especially in the US, both wanting to work with us.

“We were like, ‘Well, we’re going to be the Visa Cash App RB Formula One Team.’ I don’t hear many people mentioning Aston Martin, Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 team, and I don’t hear people talking about the MoneyGram Haas Formula 1 team, so we just have to be realistic and focus on the content, and that’s really a beautiful and fast car.”

Drake, a Canadian rap artist, did the voiceover on the social media video announcement of Sauber’s name change.

For 20 of the record-breaking 24 Grands Prix this year it will be known as Stake F1 Team. For the remaining four, in Australia, Spain, Belgium and Qatar, it will fall back to Kick Sauber.

The change is to comply with gambling advertising laws in those four countries, as Stake is an online cryptocurrency casino. The owners are also responsible for Kick, a live streaming platform.

“We will fully comply with all local applicable laws where Stake is permitted,” Alunni Bravi said. “So where gambling advertising is prohibited we will use a different name.

“Our car launch was streamed live on Kick.com, our chassis name is Kick Sauber, so where we are not going to race as Stake we will use the second team name.”

Both teams’ names have been criticized, with some fans taking to social media. “Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber is perhaps the worst name for a team in F1 history,” wrote one fan on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“When you try something new, and when you have a team name that is different from other team names, it is always easy to be critical,” said Alunni Bravi. “Of course there was criticism from those close to the Sauber name, and perhaps they expected something different.

“Maybe we went too extreme, but we wanted to do something new and appealing to our fan base. When Drake announced our name, we had 22 million impressions, a number we’ve never reached with a single post on our social media platforms. It was huge.”

For Bayer, landing Visa was an equally big coup. “You see the growth rate of F1 in the United States, a country that is a huge market for sports marketing, and Visa is a great brand,” he said.

“They’re doing Super Bowl, Olympics, FIFA World Cup and now a Formula 1 team, which is an honor for us and a huge opportunity. They will bring so many fresh ideas.”

Kendrick Lamar, the American rapper, performed at the team’s introduction in Las Vegas earlier this month. “We combine sports with entertainment, attract new fans and activate new fan groups with a new way of communicating,” said Bayer. “It is a great opportunity for Formula 1.”