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 since 1993 under different names, most recently Alfa Romeo. For this season and the next, it will take the name Stake, with Audi taking over in 2026.
“Before Audi arrived, we thought it was important to present ourselves with this new identity and set up a commercial partnership,” said Alessandro Alunni Bravi, representative of the Stake team. “The Sauber group has been present in Formula 1 for 32 years, but that does not mean that we have forgotten what Sauber is. This 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 under the name Toro Rosso, receives the name Visa Cash App.
“Visa’s head of sponsorship, Andrea Fairchild, said it was a bit of a mouthful,” said Peter Bayer, the team’s general manager. “The reality is that we said from the start last year that we would move closer to the Red Bull family.”
The RB stands for Racing Bulls, a reference to the collection of aircraft, known as the Flying Bulls, that belonged to team founder Dietrich Mateschitz.
“It’s going well,” Bayer said. “But then we had a big problem because 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 United States, both wanted partner with us.
“We said, ‘Well, we’ll be the Visa Cash App RB Formula 1 team.’ “I don’t hear a lot of people calling Aston Martin, the 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 we focus on the content, and it’s a really beautiful and fast car.
Drake, a Canadian rap artist, did the voiceover on the social media video announcing Sauber’s name change.
For 20 of this year’s record 24 Grands Prix, it will be known as the Stake F1 Team. For the other four, in Australia, Spain, Belgium and Qatar, it will be Kick Sauber.
The change aims to comply with gambling advertising laws in these four countries, as Stake is an online cryptocurrency casino. Its owners are also responsible for Kick, a live streaming platform.
“We will fully comply with all applicable local laws where participation is permitted,” said Alunni Bravi. “So where gambling advertising is prohibited, we will use a different name.
“Our car launch was broadcast live on Kick.com, our chassis name is Kick Sauber, so where we don’t race as a Stake we will use the second team name.
The names of both teams have been criticized, with some fans taking to social media. “Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber might be the worst name for a team in F1 history,” one fan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“When you’re trying something new and a team name is different from other team names, it’s always easy to be critical,” Alunni Bravi said. “Of course there was criticism from those close to the Sauber name, and maybe they expected something different.
“Maybe we went too far, but we wanted to do something new and exciting for our fans. When Drake announced our name, we had 22 million impressions, a number we have never reached with a single post on our social media platforms. It was huge.
For Bayer, obtaining Visa was an equally significant blow. “You see the growth rate of F1 in the United States, a country that is a huge market for sports marketing, and Visa is an incredible brand,” he said.
“They are doing the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup and now a Formula 1 team, which is an honor for us and a huge opportunity. They will bring so many new ideas.
Kendrick Lamar, the American rapper, performed at the team’s presentation in Las Vegas earlier this month. “We mix sports and entertainment, attract new fans, activate new groups of fans with a new way of communicating,” Bayer said. “This is an incredible opportunity for Formula 1.”