2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Emag]

By the way, somebody has to start the Racing Bulls thread, we forgot

Their livery launch is quite interesting as well. The car on the renders doesn't seem to be the default FIA model. Also it shows some actuators at the front wing.

[Holm86]

I think the renders might actually be the launch spec RB22…

Yes the renders are pretty detailed

[euv2]

Ben Hodgkinson on Mercedes having the best engine.

"But no one knows for sure," Hodgkinson says of those rumors about Mercedes power. "I think the first stories that Mercedes has the best engine came from Mercedes itself. And that was exactly when they wanted to attract the best driver," the engine hotshot refers to Mercedes' interest in Max Verstappen.
You have to remember that Mercedes wasn't performing that well at that time either. So it was politically convenient for them to start that rumor, that they have the best engine. I've been working in this world for so long and I've learned that it's better to ignore all that noise. I have confidence in my team, in Red Bull and in the facilities they have made available.

Goals for the season.

"Our goal is to win. That was already the message in the conversations I had before I took this job. You often hear a new project that a team says: the first year we want to participate, the second year we want to be in the top 3 and somewhere after that we want to win the championship. That's not how we feel about it. It will be a very difficult and big challenge, because we are a newcomer. But we believe in our own abilities."

Also, Jim Farley said on a podcast that the goal is to bring upgrades to every race this season Heavy in season development seems to be the plan.

[dodds_turbo]

By the way, somebody has to start the Racing Bulls thread, we forgot

Sorted - 2026 Visa Cash App Racing Bulls F1 Team

[Badger]

Livery looks very good. Fitting to bring something new to a different era of rules (and team), but still retaining that iconic Red Bull DNA.

[lio007]

Insider Infos from the Doc:

[bananapeel23]

The livery is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like such an amazing amalgamation of the 2007-2015 and 2016-2025 liveries. Meanwhile the car looks like a 2008 car from the front and a mix of a 2017 and 2022 car from the sides.

It looks absolutely incredible. I'm stoked to see these things on track, even if they end up being horribly slow.

That said, where are the recent estimates of lap times for these things at? Are we looking at huge pace differences between quali and the race or will deployment be able to be somewhat sustained lap-on-lap through fuel burning? Will engine performance end up being extremely track dependent, depending on the amount of braking zones and slow corners?

[Emag]

Initial simulations show that they will be quite slow. Like potentially seconds slower than 2025 cars.
There is also a chance they will run out of battery at Monza, so they will be clipping like crazy and probably there in particular the difference between qualifying laps and race laps will be bigger.

[bananapeel23]

Initial simulations show that they will be quite slow. Like potentially seconds slower than 2025 cars.
There is also a chance they will run out of battery at Monza, so they will be clipping like crazy and probably there in particular the difference between qualifying laps and race laps will be bigger.

I'm guessing that stop-start tracks like Bahrain, Monaco, CGV, Baku (except main straight) and Singapore will be where they perform best, while sweeping tracks with long straights and few slow corners like Monza, Albert Park and Jeddah will be nightmarishly bad?

[venkyhere]

That said, where are the recent estimates of lap times for these things at? Are we looking at huge pace differences between quali and the race or will deployment be able to be somewhat sustained lap-on-lap through fuel burning? Will engine performance end up being extremely track dependent, depending on the amount of braking zones and slow corners?

The 2026 car is going to have less drag and less downforce and less weight (after all teams have brought their cars to min.weight limit) than the GE era 2022-2025 cars.
Though the 'total peak power' remains at 1000 bhp, the peak power ratio ICE:bat has moved from 80:20 to 50:50. That means, while a Q lap for the 2026 car will have more or less same level of energy to be used over a lap, the 2026 R lap (a stint lap where lap-to-lap variance in times will be very small when they are driving to a target time) will be incredibly slower than the 2022-2025 car ; because over a race, all the 'energy' has to come purely from fuel, since the battery has to undergo deployment and recharge cycles throughout the race (the initial fully charged battery before formation lap can be discounted as it forms a small % of total race energy). This is because there is a limit how much power/energy an ICE with 500bhp peak can produce, compared to an ICE with 800bhp peak. Moreover, the fuel flow limit is reduced in the new regs compared to previous GE regs. So, while the reduced drag/weight might somewhat compensate for the reduced peak ICE power over a Q lap, where the battery can be fully drained (thus Q lap times not increasing too much) , a typical R lap will be incredibly slower than what we are used to in the GE era.

[AR3-GP]

Car was fired up last weekend.

Red Bull Ford Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson on progress: "This engine we've got today is actually our sixth generation. So we keep evolving it, keep trying to make it better. But just last weekend was a particularly personal moment for me and all of my team mates, where the Red Bull engine and the Red Bull chassis got married together in a race bay. It was kind of poignant in that every single second of running up until that point had been done on a dyno, and this time it was running on its own in the back of a car in a race bay, and to hear it fire up was it was a really emotional moment for me. It was the RB22, the Red Bull chassis, and the DM01, the Red Bull Ford Powertrains engine, coming together as a pure Red Bull thoroughbred. It was very special indeed..."

@adamcooperF1

[vorticism]

No photographs of the RB22 yet. I'd say lock the car thread until the car is photographed on track, like other years. Yes, the 3D model is nuanced, but there will be no shortage of 3D models within the team that can be used to make renderings for the press. Just use early CFD/FEA quality models for the render, presto. Makes a better quality press item, but won't necessarily correlate to what we'll see on track. There's no incentive for a team to give their IP away for free two months early.

The suspension arrangement is probably real, as that will have been an early decision. Exact bodywork shapes will probably change, and we're probably just seeing early development work here. Similar to prev years online reveals ahead of testing photos.

[AR3-GP]

Car was fired up last weekend.

Red Bull Ford Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson on progress: "This engine we've got today is actually our sixth generation. So we keep evolving it, keep trying to make it better. But just last weekend was a particularly personal moment for me and all of my team mates, where the Red Bull engine and the Red Bull chassis got married together in a race bay. It was kind of poignant in that every single second of running up until that point had been done on a dyno, and this time it was running on its own in the back of a car in a race bay, and to hear it fire up was it was a really emotional moment for me. It was the RB22, the Red Bull chassis, and the DM01, the Red Bull Ford Powertrains engine, coming together as a pure Red Bull thoroughbred. It was very special indeed..."

@adamcooperF1

I think the fire up was on the 10th.

[f1isgood]

All news seems to be so far positive from Red Bull side of things. Let's hope they have some clever ideas and a good aerodynamic platform to start a budget-capped engine and aero era.

Nice car livery as well.

[AR3-GP]

There was perhaps no better indication of the effort and focus going on at Red Bull Powertrains than its technical director Ben Hodgkinson electing to skip the season launch so he could instead keep working at the factory.

Indeed, as Red Bull's top brass took to the stage, Hodgkinson was burning the midnight oil in the dyno facility helping put a sixth-generation Red Bull power unit through Barcelona race simulations.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/unst ... -it-seems/

As Phil Prew, Red Bull Powertrains' chief engineer, said: "The very architecture of the power unit was able to be aligned with the concepts and the direction that we wanted to take with the chassis, to give maximum freedom for the aerodynamics.

"That work started right from the very concept and, as we built the power unit, put more complexity on, we were constantly working with our colleagues in the chassis side to understand the trades that we're making."