According to the recently-released accounts of the Red Bull Racing Formula One team, their 2009 season saw the Austrian caffeinated sickly drink maker plunge some £100 million of funding into their title-chasing team, without securing a title.
The figures, revealed this week, do not necessarily mean that the team is hemorrhaging money for the Red Bull brand, especially given the complicated set-up behind the squad and it's sister team Toro Rosso, but do show the added cost to the company of stepping up from random midfielder to genuine title contender last season.
The accounts show different payments to both Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Technology, the parent company which operates away from RBR in order to allow the supply of technology to both Red Bull and Toro Rosso.
The Red Bull Technology company was paid £106.8m by the Red Bull drinks brand in 2009, up from £82.4m in 2008, though RBT also declared a profit of £3.8m for the year, up nearly £1m from the preceding year.
The payments from Red Bull to Red Bull Racing increased from £78.9m to £96.9m, though this payment included a share of the money paid to RBT, in a confusing accountancy-based mess. The RBR team's profit for the season was an almost-impressive £704,000, again up on 2008's numbers.
Total turnover for the Red Bull Racing team was £132.7m in 2009, a figure which includes TV money from Bernie Ecclestone's FOM company, as well as outside sponsorship sources.
The expenditure in both RBR and RBT was ascribed to an increase in research and development as they strove to catch Brawn GP in the 2009 title fight.
In particular, the team was forced to spend a significant amount of time and money developing their own double diffuser, after being caught off-guard by Brawn's early-season development. The team also spent money developing their ultimately unraced KERS device.
RBT reportedly spent some £57.2m on R&D in 2009, up nearly £10m on 2008's figures. The company also saw their yearly salary payments increase to £40.9m, believed to be entirely down to bonuses paid to the staff for the team's success.
A report from the US SpeedTV website claims that a Red Bull team insider reported that the teams operating costs were actually lower in 2009 than in the previous year, and that the increased figures merely represented the 'cost of success'.
The accounts also show a payment of £10.4 million to the RBT company from Toro Rosso for services rendered. This figure is lower than the 2008 figure, but this is thought to be down to the winding-down of the partnership between the two last year, with the F1 rulebook forcing Toro Rosso to go it alone for their 2010 car design.
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