Team Goh announces split with Red Bull Junior Team

The Honda-powered squad raced as an independent team in the Japanese single-seater series for the first time this year, running a pair of cars for rookie duo Ren Sato and Atsushi Miyake.

As part of the arrangement, Sato was made a Red Bull junior driver and his #53 car carried the energy drink brand's famous livery.

However, late on Sunday evening after the final race of the season at Suzuka, Goh boss Kazuhiro Ikeda took to Twitter to announce that the team's association with Red Bull will not continue into 2023.

"It's a real shame, but today the Red Bull junior programme we had been running has come to an end," Ikeda wrote. "We were not strong enough to get tangible results. We are sorry. 

"Our activities for next year and onwards are still to be defined, and we are working on it now." 

 

The news leaves Team Goh's participation in Super Formula for 2023 uncertain, with the team's second car thought to be financially unviable without the involvement of Red Bull.

Team Mugen is expected to run the Red Bull-backed Super Formula entry next year as its second car, rekindling a relationship that started in 2017 - the year Pierre Gasly raced in the series - and continued until last year.

The Servus Japan organisation that ran the Mugen/Red Bull effort previously and was behind Team Goh's two-car attack this year will not be involved, with Mugen instead running the second car in-house.

It follows Servus Japan's impending split with the ARTA Honda team in SUPER GT, as revealed exclusively by Motorsport.com last week.

 

Sato (above) scored his first podium of the season in last weekend's penultimate race of the season at Suzuka on his way to 12th in the final standings, also beating teammate Miyake to Rookie of the Year.

Team Goh concluded its first and possibly only season as a fully-fledged Super Formula outfit seventh in the teams' standings, with Miyake also scoring a podium earlier in the season at Autopolis.