New F1 Team Names Bring Money, Marketing and Lots of Syllables

Formula 1 has two new team names this season, which follow 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 since 1993 under various names, most recently as Alfa Romeo. For this season and next it will take the Stake name, with Audi taking over in 2026.

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

AlphaTauri, which entered Formula 1 in 2006 as Toro Rosso, is getting the Visa Cash App name.

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

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

“It fits well,” Bayer said. “But then we had a great 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 U.S., both wanting to partner with us.