Red Bull is known for being tough on its drivers who don’t perform as expected, having recently made the brutal decision to replace Liam Lawson after just two races.
Lawson holds the record for the shortest Red Bull career in the history of the team, beating test and reserve driver Robert Doornbos who contested the final three rounds of the 2006 season after a contract dispute with Christian Albers.
The 23-year-old New Zealander joins the list of drivers who have been rejected by Red Bull, although even they had more time and races to prove themselves than Lawson.
A fair few drivers have been promoted from the junior ranks to sister Racing Bulls and not went on to race for the main team, including Spanish driver Jaime Alguersuari, who was one of the youngest drivers to start a Grand Prix at the Hungarian GP in 2009.
Discussing his three-year career at Toro Rosso on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Alguersuari details how Red Bull’s handling of his career ‘destroyed’ him.
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Jaime Alguersuari details how Red Bull ‘destroyed’ him after axe
Alguersuari replaced lead driver Sebastian Buemi after nine races in 2009, and although he was regularly finishing ahead of Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher at some races, Red Bull felt he was not doing enough to justify a seat in the main team.
After the 2011 season he was replaced by Daniel Ricciardo and Alguersuari was out of a seat, despite being in contact with a few before Red Bull decided to pull the plug at the 11th hour.
“It destroyed my life because of the way it happened, you know, 18th of December 2011. I was in Madrid launching the car for the following year. I remember we had James Key coming in as a technical director in Toro Rosso. We had good expectations for the next year, even though it was going to be the third year of the car being designed and developed in Faenza,” said Alguersuari.
“I refused an offer from Lotus. Eric Boullier called me and that offer came in Abu Dhabi. They asked me to sign in at the race track because Kimi [Raikkonen] was coming back from rallying. They wanted a second driver with experience, knowledge and understanding of the tyres. My profile fit well because I was delivering good results.
“I said ‘Listen, I’ve been with these guys [Red Bull] all my career. It’s going really well.’ With Red Bull, I didn’t believe anything bad could happen.”
Helmut Marko told Jaime Alguersuari to seek drive at HRT
After Red Bull chose to leave everything until the last minute, Alguersuari recalls one thing Helmut Marko told him when he was informed that they would not be continuing after the 2011 season.
“After two months, I found myself out and with no expectations to go back in [F1]. Helmut Marko told me, in his way of talking, to call HRT because they might have a seat. I didn’t even want to call HRT to be P20,” said Alguersuari.
“So I stayed home and then I did Pirelli testing, which kept me somehow active in F1, but then a few teams called, they asked me for sponsorship, which I didn’t have. But its all good, the only thing that bothered me was how they did it. They waited till the very, very last second in order that we didn’t have a chance to sign with any other team and that hurt a lot.”
Toro Rosso was one of the midfield teams in 2011 and would regularly finish ahead of Marussia, Caterham and HRT Racing. HRT was by far the slowest team on the grid, having failed to score any points throughout its entire four years in F1 before it folded at the end of 2012.
Alguersuari would go on to leave motorsport altogether and take up DJing, where he has become successful ever since.
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