Red Bull buys Minardi team

Minardi will disappear from Formula One at the end of this season after 21 years mostly spent propping up the grid.

A buy-out by Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz means that the Italian equipe will be rebranded, most likely as a Red Bull junior team.

It means that Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi are guaranteed F1 race seats in 2006,  possibly with one in the junior team and the other alongside David Coulthard in the ‘seniors’.

Candidates for the second junior seat include American GP2 driver Scott Speed and, according to rumours, Honda-backed Takuma Sato.