Coulthard stays with Red Bull

The soft drinks company, which already own Red Bull Racing, bought the Jaguar team from Ford last November.

Red Bull will now take control of Minardi on 1 November with plans to use it as a junior team to groom the drivers in their young driver scheme.

Minardi owner Stoddart had held talks with Red Bull over the last week before concluding the agreement on Saturday.

In an official statement from Salzburg the company said: "At the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, an agreement was reached whereby Red Bull GmbH will take over all the company shares of the Minardi Formula One team.

The workforce will remain and the team will remain in Faenza and that to me was incredibly important Paul Stoddart

"Red Bull will therefore run two Formula One teams from the start of the 2006 season onwards.

The second team will be positioned as a 'rookie' team and this and the current Red Bull Racing will operate independently of one another."

Australian aviation millionaire Stoddart hailed the agreement as "good news for Minardi" and insisted the team's base in Faenza, Italy would remain.

Red Bull Racing are based in Milton Keynes while the energy drinks giant hail from Austria.

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Stoddart said: "I've always said since 2001 that if anyone could take the team further than I could and could fund the team better than I could that I would sell. That offer has finally come.

"I know they will take the team further and farther with the resources that I just simply can't put into it. You only have to look at the job they've done with the ex-Jaguar team.

"The commitments I wanted I've got - that the workforce will remain and the team will remain in Faenza and that to me was incredibly important.

"It makes me happy if Minardi is more successful under Red Bull than it was under me. I leave Minardi in a lot healthier state than when I bought it in 2000."

Stoddart added that he had received 41 approaches for Minardi since he took over the team in 2001.

F1's secretive commercial agreement - that runs to the end of 2007 - has measures to deter ownership of more than one team by an entity.

However, Stoddart suggested they were not a major concern.