M-Sport’s 2017 World Rally Championship-winning livery will be remembered as one of the absolute greats.
That Ford Fiesta WRC will forever sit alongside a Martini-striped Lancia or a 555-flashed Subaru.
Chris Williams designed a beautiful car and Sébastien Ogier drove it like it was drawn. Cars and championships will never be forgotten by the history books. But it’s the colors that keep these things on the world’s bedroom walls.
And we have Dietrich Mateschitz to thank for that.
Establishing the Red Bull brand back in 1984, the Austrian who sadly died on Saturday could have had no idea of the impact he would have on rallying and the wider world of extreme sport and motorsport.
Some of the earliest rally cars graced by that world-famous livery belonged to Mateschitz’s countryman and friend Raimund Baumschlager.
Go all the way back to Baumschlager’s time trying in vain to make a Volkswagen Golf G60 work in the early 1990s, through his time in the British Rally Championship and on to 14 Austrian titles and Red Bull, and Mateschitz has been there with him.
Today, it’s hard to spot a professional driver in the paddock without a Red Bull crash helmet.
While much of the motorsport focus for the brand remains on its Formula 1 team, rallying remained a significant part of the picture. Nine-time world champion Sébastien Loeb remains very much a Red Bull driver as Kalle Rovanperä represents the next generation to wear Mateschitz’s colors.
Behind the drivers and the co-drivers, Red Bull’s influence is felt further in the World Rally Championship, with the firm’s Media House partnering in WRC Promoter.
DirtFish would like to pass on our condolences to Mateschitz’s family and friends.
