Helmut Marko: choosing champions at Red Bull

F1 Beyond The Grid

karenellenbevan

Leisure, Sports News, News, Sports, Technology, Automotive

4.8 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every driver who wants to win with Red Bull needs to impress Helmut Marko. The veteran Motorsport Advisor oversees the team’s young driver programme and helped launch the careers of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen. A former F1 driver himself, he knows what it takes to race under the highest pressure.

Helmut tells Tom Clarkson about his life in racing: childhood adventures in Austria with future world champion Jochen Rindt, and the serious eye injury which ended his driving career just as he was about to join Ferrari. He tells the story of how he met Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, and how they started the F1 team which would go on to win races and championships with Vettel and Verstappen.

Plus, Marko explains how Verstappen and Team Principal Laurent Mekies have changed the team’s approach in 2025 and picks the young driver with potential to be a future champion.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever been wrong about a driver?
0:08.7	Yes.
0:09.7	Is there someone who you've axed from the program who in hindsight you think maybe I should have been more patient?
0:16.1	No.
0:17.0	There are a lot of drivers where I thought they could do great.
0:20.7	They didn't in the end.
0:22.5	Going to Formula One, the pressure is double as much and you have to deliver every lap.
0:28.2	So in this pressure, not many could stand.
0:32.3	Helmut Marco, Red Bull Racing Motorsport Advisor, knows what it takes to make it in Formula One and what it takes to win.
0:40.3	If you want to be champion, you're not a gentleman driver. The ego is so big and you have to be like that to win a championship.
0:50.6	He was a racer himself and he still has that mentality.
0:55.1	I'm always the one who is more on the aggressive side.
0:59.1	If it comes to decisions, should we go more careful.
1:02.9	Now go for it.
1:08.3	Hello everyone. I'm Tom Clarkson and I've wanted to get Helmut Marco on F1 Beyond the Grid for years.
1:17.1	Racing's been his life. As a boy at school in Austria, he skied and raced cars with Yock and Rint,
1:23.4	who'd go on to become Formula One world champion. In the early 1970s, Helmut raced in Grand Prix himself
1:30.0	and was on the brink of joining Ferrari when a serious eye injury ended his racing career. He shifted
1:36.7	gear and became a team owner, and that led him to meet Dietrich Mattershitz, the founder of an energy
1:43.3	drink company which sponsored promising young drivers. Dietrich Matterschitz, the founder of an energy drink company which sponsored promising
1:45.6	young drivers. Dietrich and Helmut saw a chance to start Red Bull Racing and they took it.
1:51.3	The team has achieved the extraordinary since its first Grand Prix in 2005. Six Constructors
	...

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