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Red Bull is granting its cycling team access to a space-age performance center and a Formula 1 expert in its plot to stampede to the top of pro cycling in 2025.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is confident its first off-season diving into the deep pockets and first-in-class facilities of its mega-backer will help the team stomp to the center of the “super team” struggle for WorldTour supremacy.
“Last year Red Bull was on the jersey, but not much more. But over winter we’re really becoming Red Bull in structure and resources,” team head of performance Dan Lorang told Velo.
“Next year will be the ‘real’ start for us with Red Bull,” Lorang said.
Red Bull arrived into pro cycling this summer with a buzz befitting its super-charged insomnia drink.
There was belief the brand’s bulging bank balance and sporting savvy would start a new chapter for pro cycling.
That era might only really start in the new season.
A swell of staff, expertise, and resource will put Red Bull onto the cycling map.
“We will have a lot of changes going into 2025, and a lot more opportunity,” Lorang said in a recent call. “We will have more people working for us, new opportunities to enhance performance, better access to facilities.
“It could be a game changer for us,” Lorang said.
Red Bull rushed its way into the peloton last summer in time to stick its logo into the Tour de France. It was a marketing exercise as much as a sporting mission.
Next year will be different.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is backing a full off-season overhaul for success.
Team leader Primož Roglič will be buzzing alongside Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard in 2025.
“After the winter, we will be even better prepared,” Lorang said. “We will have the base to say we can fight for the podium at the Tour de France. We will really be ready to win the biggest races.”
Red Bull’s mid-summer soft launch
Red Bull wants to be as synonymous to pro cycling as it is to F1 or its freeride rampage.
It took a 51 percent stake in Bora-Hansgrohe last summer with the intent of blowing up the WorldTour and winning the Tour de France.
Roglič’s crash and abandon in the second week of the 2024 Tour defizzed that big entry.
The Slovenian’s redemptive victory at the Vuelta a España might set the tone for what’s to come.
“We are very optimistic we can improve from where we are now, by a lot,” Lorang told Velo.
“We’ve finished the season with a grand tour and the top five in the world ranking,” he said. “That’s a strong start that we can only improve on.”
The Red Bull buzz arrives in the winter
Red Bull isn’t the biggest backer in the pro peloton, but it’s one of the most sport-focused and socially slick.
Its sporting empire spans from the fine-tuning of F1 to the stoke of snow sports and MTB freeride.
The mega-brand’s big move into road racing reportedly doubled the Bora-Hansgrohe budget to around €45 million per year – a total not far from those of top rivals Visma-Lease a Bike and Ineos Grenadiers.
UAE Team Emirates is believed to be the best-financed team in the WorldTour with a crazy €55 million annual coffer.
Red Bull’s big investment into road racing will have Bora-Hansgrohe’s back-room bulging at the seams heading into 2025.
Long-time staffers like Lorang will be reinforced by a swathe of sporting experts.
“We’ve got more resources to sign new riders, but also to hire some of the best people in their field – like Dan Bigham for example,” Lorang said. “Now we have more people available for certain specialist tasks, things we couldn’t fully work on before.”
Part-time side jobs have become full-time positions.
Red Bull’s expertise in a packed portfolio of sports is trickling into the cycling team.
“Three people are now doing the job I used to do,” said Lorang, who graduated through the Red Bull staffing hierarchy.
“All through the organization, everybody can focus more on their primary task,” he said. “All those tasks can be done better, more effectively, and with better information.”
“The Red Bull effect” isn’t all behind the scenes, however.
The WorldTour team’s reported €10 million move for Remco Evenepoel fell flat, but the roster still gets a full refresh for 2025.
Jan Tratnik, Oier Lazkano, and Laurence Pithie are among eight new arrivals who will both bolster the grand tour team and create a whole new classics crew.
In the longer-term, a newly established U23 team will feed fresh talent into the big Bulls.
However, Red Bull’s most significant off-season investment could have been in a Formula 1 engineer.
Big brains for small gains
Dan Bigham and his long-time henchman Jonny Wale arrived to Red Bull this autumn and are already establishing their all-new “engineering team.”
Bigham is among the many technical experts devoted to materials, aerodynamics, and all-things optimization who are flooding the modern WorldTour.
“Engineering and materials are becoming more and more important now,” Lorang told Velo.
“Training is the base of everything, but we’re finding that the gains available in training are limited. Information is so available now that everybody has similar knowledge, and uses similar methods. So you have to look to other fields,” Lorang said.
“One of the biggest wins that can be had now is with the materials.”
After high-carb fuelling and core body cooling, engineering expertise has become the latest competitive must-have – and Bigham is the man to bring it.
The Brit has a degree in motorsport engineering, experience working with the Mercedes F1 team, and hits the ground running after years working at Ineos Grenadiers.
He’s the WorldTour’s king of CdA.
Bigham has already been tinkering in the wind tunnels of his new team’s bike partner Specialized. His quest to find free speed has seen him pestering the aerodynamicists at Red Bull HQ.
“Energy you can save with an aero position or better clothing and material are gains you don’t have to make with training,” Lorang said. “It’s very hard now to gain 30 or 40 watts in a season, but you can definitely lose that with a better set-up.”
“With Dan, Jonny, and Red Bull’s facilities, we now know we’re in very good hands in this area,” Lorang said.
An ‘Athlete Performance Center’ to unsettle Team UAE
Bigham is only the tip of the Red Bull winter revolution.
“We now have access to the Red Bull performance center, and the time to use it,” Lorang said. “Having those facilities, and access to the specialization Red Bull has there in so many different fields … it’s a door-opener.”
The Salzburg “Athlete Performance Center” is the castle in Red Bull’s sporting kingdom.
It puts every type of specialist and every form of technology into one multi-million euro unit.
If you want to see a sports psychologist before you go for a VO2 Max test and a biomechanical analysis, this is the place.
It’s a facility even UAE Emirates would lust for.
“At the moment Visma-Lease a Bike leads the way on performance, along with UAE Team Emirates. But we’re going to close the gap,” team boss Ralph Denk vowed to Cyclingnews this summer.
Closing the gap
The question is, how much can the Bora-Bulls cut the gap to their rival “super teams”?
UAE Emirates obliterated the 2024 WorldTour with 81 wins across 20 different riders. The year before that, an injury-free version of team Visma-Lease a Bike gobbled up all three grand tours.
No matter what the R&D, Red Bull needs Roglič to stomp hooves with Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Evenepoel.
Rogla at times looked odd-one-out to his younger, spicier rivals before he crashed out of the Tour. His Vuelta a España victory is asterisked with *in the absence of the rest of the “Big 4.”
Lorang is confident Roglič has got plenty of power left in his 35-year-old legs.
The performance guru backs the team’s Red Bull’s winter boost to energize every corner of the squad.
“We saw when we won the Vuelta we have potential,” Lorang said. “And now we have the chance to really grow with Red Bull.”
Pro cycling experienced a reduced-calorie, low-caffeine version of Red Bull in 2024.
Expect the full buzz in 2025.
