Potential Red Bull stars at Macau GP

It gives you wings, claim the Red Bull energy-drink makers. "Caffeine-induced shakes" might be more accurate, but there's little doubt the Red Bull Junior Team have helped a lot of fledgling drivers take flight in Formula One.

Most F1 teams run youth-development programmes to some extent, but in terms of sheer numbers of successful graduates to the big stage, the RBJT are surely the most prolific. Since they started in 2001, 13 drivers have made F1, though only one has won a race.

Given that he's Sebastian Vettel and could win his third consecutive world championship today in Texas, we can make allowances. Indeed, such has been the number of graduates that the sponsors had to buy a second team, rebranding Minardi as Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2005.

The team have an extensive scouting network through the karting world, and only pick drivers they feel have a genuine chance of winning F1 races.

In 2004 Christian Klien became the first, and Vettel won their first F1 race in 2008 at Monza. Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne graduated to Toro Rosso this season.

It's an expensive business, with former F1 driver Mark Blundell, who now runs a sports-management company, telling the Financial Times recently: "To get from the entry level of motor racing to [junior series] GP2, on the threshold of F1, will cost something like €5 million."