2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[lio007]

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.

I think so too!

[lio007]

According to Max Red Bull won't do a shakedown before Barcelona.

[Wouter]

Verstappen, Hadjar and Lindblad at the Red Bull Ford launch in the USA!

It starts with Max at 8:45 min.

[venkyhere]

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.

There is one thing and one thing only, that matters for the first 5-6 races (first 1/4 of the season) :
how good is the fuel, and how reliable is the engine, relatively to the rest of the grid. Lap time performance doesn't matter, what matters most is reliability - otherwise it will be a return to the Renault PU 'nightmare'.

There is no need to get into the rat race, against 'traditional engine manufacturers', right at the start. 2026 will be a success, if the car is a winnable one, post summer break. If that means Max doesn't finish P1/P2 in the WDC, and contract clause activation, so be it. Max is smart enough to not activate the clause if by the end of the year, he has a cluster of wins over the second half. Yes, the way Mekies is talking to the media, it's a case of underpromise and overdeliver, but I wouldn't be surprised if Max finishes P6-P7 over the first 4-5 races. It's fine.

[FW17]

Verstappen, Hadjar and Lindblad at the Red Bull Ford launch in the USA!

It starts with Max at 8:45 min.

They ditched one driver already?

[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.

There is one thing and one thing only, that matters for the first 5-6 races (first 1/4 of the season) :
how good is the fuel, and how reliable is the engine, relatively to the rest of the grid. Lap time performance doesn't matter, what matters most is reliability - otherwise it will be a return to the Renault PU 'nightmare'.

There is no need to get into the rat race, against 'traditional engine manufacturers', right at the start. 2026 will be a success, if the car is a winnable one, post summer break. If that means Max doesn't finish P1/P2 in the WDC, and contract clause activation, so be it. Max is smart enough to not activate the clause if by the end of the year, he has a cluster of wins over the second half. Yes, the way Mekies is talking to the media, it's a case of underpromise and overdeliver, but I wouldn't be surprised if Max finishes P6-P7 over the first 4-5 races. It's fine.

I would be lying if I said I don't have higher expectations. I don't expect Red Bull to come out dominating but I also don't expect them to be fourth fastest. I still think the only thing Red Bull lack with respect to traditional engine manufacturers is the resources from other parts of the company that maybe useful but nothing other than that.

After all, if they decided to stop providing with Mercedes inside information and moved all the current HPP staff to a new factory and made them make an engine, would you expect them to produce a dud? I think they would still make a quality engine. It's ultimately the processes and the people.

This season will reveal a lot about the quality of the engine department - especially in the quality of staff in their ability to work together. If they got very good people to work together well at RBPT there is no reason to expect them to be behind any traditional engine manufacturers. The investment is massive, and there are serious upsides with a new factory among other things.

You have to be fighting for a title with a driver like Verstappen. Post summer break wins will not be enough like we saw in 2025 unless the car actually becomes outright best at development by Spa.

I don't think this project will ever be a case of Renault era mismanagement. Renault were, to put it mildly, unserious.

Edit: Good point about the fuel. Could be a big factor.....

[Emag]

Do we know if RedBull are having a filming day before Barcelona?

[lio007]

Do we know if RedBull are having a filming day before Barcelona?

No, they won't.

[SB15]

Racing Suits:

[AR3-GP]

It's Nugnes, but:

Obviously, great attention was paid to the new power unit: the unit produced by Red Bull Powertrains in collaboration with Ford Motorsport made its debut at Imola, transforming the Milton Keynes facility into a real manufacturer.

In total, between yesterday and today, about 170 km have been covered without any particular reliability problems emerging either to the 6-cylinder turbo or to the electric motor, two elements that divide the power almost equally for a sum that should exceed a thousand horsepower.

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-ra ... /10791753/

[Wouter]

The truck has arrived.

[pantherxxx]

It will be Max's year. These cars produce 30% less downforce, and ground effect is lot less. Correlation with wind tunnel should be much better for Red Bull. As long as the aero team can trust the tools they're using, it should be good.

[napoleon1981]

It will be Max's year. These cars produce 30% less downforce, and ground effect is lot less. Correlation with wind tunnel should be much better for Red Bull. As long as the aero team can trust the tools they're using, it should be good.

My guess is that all of this is irrelevant, and its all about having the right engine.

[lio007]

It will be quite interesting to see the first non-Newey car for Red Bull since decades
Will they also have engineering trends like the hole in the diffuser or even new features that we haven't seen yet.

The PU is likely the biggest unknown for the team.

[Paa]

I miss the tradition of Red Bull shakedown with blurry images and hundreds of post trying to decipher one shady detail on them.

I also don't like this year's pre-season schedule. I got used to see the cars running on the track few days after the first images appear. Now we can wait weeks for the first public test.