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On an overcast day in Italy in late 2008, Franz Tost was sitting in his stationary car, engine running, listening intently to the instructions coming down the phone.
Then, as now, Tost was a proud F1 team principal who had just presided over a dream maiden victory for his small Italian-based Formula 1 team in the pouring rain at Monza, against all the odds.
Nevertheless, he was a team boss having his ear bent. Because on the other end of the phone was Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz, and he had questions. A lot of them.
“Dietrich was an exceptional person you will find only once in your life,” says Tost, now 67, from his office in Faenza, Italy, from where he is set to retire as Alpha Tauri team principal at the end of 2023.
“He was warm and friendly, but he was always demanding because otherwise he would not achieve all these successes – if something didn’t go in the right direction he wanted to know everything, he wanted to know details and he called many times if he wanted to know something.”
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The call that day went on for some time. But the details of Tost’s tenure at Red Bull’s ‘other team’ contains many successes, chief among them nurturing some of the sport’s greatest champions, including newly crowned three-time F1 champion Max Verstappen and four-time title winner Sebastian Vettel.
Austrian former domestic Formula 3 driver Tost found his way into F1 with Michael Schumacher’s then manager Willi Weber and the seven-time champion’s brother Ralf at Williams, before assuming the position that would define him as one of the most approachable and easy-going figures heading one of the most approachable and easy-going teams in a pitlane often consumed by the stress of high-level automotive politicking.
Mateschitz died in 2022 but left a unique legacy in F1 with Red Bull’s success since entering the sport as a team-owning brand in 2005.
Tost is convinced he “would not sit in this position now” without the often reclusive Mateschitz’s support.
