2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[f1isgood]

I'd like to never speak of the RB20 again

It's a title winning car.

[Xyz22]

2024 F1 winter test results
1. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari): 1:29.921 (Day 3)
2. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari): 1:30.322 (Day 3)
3. George Russell (Mercedes): 1:30.368 (Day 3)
4. Zhou Guanyu (Sauber): 1:30.647 (Day 3)
5. Max Verstappen (Red Bull): 1:30.755 (Day 3


It's over. Car is 1 second slower than Ferrari. Max has no chance to win.

Max did some insane long runs in 2024 testing.

[gearboxtrouble]

Wasn't the crash just half an hour before end of day 2? So the team lost not that much of tracktime.

Thats fair, would say choosing to run on Tuesday was more impactful than the crash. They lost a whole day of the sort of running they were able to do Monday and Friday. I'm sure the crash itself changed what Max had to focus on for today because he was in a rebuilt/patched car.

I have to agree! Running on Tuesday was a very, very bad decision. They knew it would be a wet day. Maybe Max' illness influenced the decision.

I think the forecast at the time called for rain every day through Thursday so I guess they decided to just get their "wet" day over with and learn about the new cars in the wet. They are going to be very different to drive in the rain with the lower downforce levels, smaller contact patches and massive amounts of electric torque so maybe they were actually able to learn something that will give them an edge over the teams that only went on the dry days.

[AR3-GP]

Thats fair, would say choosing to run on Tuesday was more impactful than the crash. They lost a whole day of the sort of running they were able to do Monday and Friday. I'm sure the crash itself changed what Max had to focus on for today because he was in a rebuilt/patched car.

I have to agree! Running on Tuesday was a very, very bad decision. They knew it would be a wet day. Maybe Max' illness influenced the decision.

I think the forecast at the time called for rain every day through Thursday so I guess they decided to just get their "wet" day over with and learn about the new cars in the wet. They are going to be very different to drive in the rain with the lower downforce levels, smaller contact patches and massive amounts of electric torque so maybe they were actually able to learn something that will give them an edge over the teams that only went on the dry days.

Reading between some lines, the team wanted to do Mon-Wed and return to base. The turnaround time for Bahrain is not very long.

[Paa]

Reading between some lines, the team wanted to do Mon-Wed and return to base. The turnaround time for Bahrain is not very long.

Exactly. The real damage of the crash was the 2 days delay.
I'm not exactly sure why, but clearly it was more important for them to finish early, than to wait for a better weather window.
Ironically, if they had known they had to stay until Friday at the end, they wouldn’t have gone out on Tuesday at all.

[venkyhere]

Red Bull will be delighted with how this test went minus the Hadjar crash but maybe the data about running in the wet with these cars will be valuable. The engine is ahead of where I expected and did a massive amount of laps between both teams with no major failures. The aero concept looks aggressive and the car should evolve significantly by Melbourne.

Yes, Redbull will be delighted, secretly. Everyone (Russel couldn't hide it) expected RBPT to suffer atleast 1 'PU trouble & stop mid track' amongst the 4 cars over the 5 days. Nothing happened. And wasn't limited by 'we didnt get enough time' factors that prevented laptimes to be totally different w.r.t other teams. It was vanilla. It was as if they were a customer team running an engine bought from some engine maker. That is a huge victory, psychologically, not just for intra-team confidence, but also amongst the competition 'that annoying team refuses to die'.

The crash probably held them back from getting deep into setup optimization and pushing performance like Mercedes and Ferrari did but this should give them confidence that Bahrain can focus on those things.

hmm.. I don't think any team (except Mercedes probably) were even going near 'setup optimization' - just run a 'base setup which isn't unbalanced' and collect data that will help further optimize PU maps alongwith finding out whether the aero concept is 'wrong' or 'in the right direction'. Mainly, to identify and rank which are the 'big ticket items' , which are the 'low hanging fruit' , which are the 'mid ranking items' etc, in terms of PU/chassis development plan for the rest of the season. I think that was the objective of the entire 5 days. But then I could be wrong as well.

[venkyhere]

I'd like to never speak of the RB20 again

[f1isgood]

Red Bull will be delighted with how this test went minus the Hadjar crash but maybe the data about running in the wet with these cars will be valuable. The engine is ahead of where I expected and did a massive amount of laps between both teams with no major failures. The aero concept looks aggressive and the car should evolve significantly by Melbourne.

Yes, Redbull will be delighted, secretly. Everyone (Russel couldn't hide it) expected RBPT to suffer atleast 1 'PU trouble & stop mid track' amongst the 4 cars over the 5 days. Nothing happened. And wasn't limited by 'we didnt get enough time' factors that prevented laptimes to be totally different w.r.t other teams. It was vanilla. It was as if they were a customer team running an engine bought from some engine maker. That is a huge victory, psychologically, not just for intra-team confidence, but also amongst the competition 'that annoying team refuses to die'.

There's still some culture left over there.

[Sergej]

Too early to be impressed by the RBPT. No major problem, ok, that's good, but apparently nobody used 2026 legal fuels, which they will do in Bahrain, nor they really pushed the cars to evaluate efficiency, battery recharging, mid straight derating. These things will be key performance differentiators so I want to see that before calling me impressed.

[FittingMechanics]

Too early to be impressed by the RBPT. No major problem, ok, that's good, but apparently nobody used 2026 legal fuels, which they will do in Bahrain, nor they really pushed the cars to evaluate efficiency, battery recharging, mid straight derating. These things will be key performance differentiators so I want to see that before calling me impressed.

I think that is a myth, everyone used the fuels that will be used in the season. What would be the point of using different fuels. What is your source on them using non legal fuels.

Teams did 300-500 laps but you think no one pushed the car to evaluate recharging or derating?

[Sergej]

Too early to be impressed by the RBPT. No major problem, ok, that's good, but apparently nobody used 2026 legal fuels, which they will do in Bahrain, nor they really pushed the cars to evaluate efficiency, battery recharging, mid straight derating. These things will be key performance differentiators so I want to see that before calling me impressed.

I think that is a myth, everyone used the fuels that will be used in the season. What would be the point of using different fuels. What is your source on them using non legal fuels.

Teams did 300-500 laps but you think no one pushed the car to evaluate recharging or derating?

Yes there were multiple sources (Autoracer for example) claiming that they didn't use the regular fuels, even before the tests took place. They didn't use 2025 fuels but a formulation similar to the 2026 ones. Probably the point was to have an "intermediate" test before switching to the 2026 fuels.

Cars will be really pushed when they do race simulations. At that point we'll have a more clear picture.

[AR3-GP]

A good engine doesn’t guarantee much. That is the default for the competitive teams. Even if power and reliability are good, it only puts the teams in a position like 2024 or 2025 where the chassis makes a big difference.

[TNTHead]

A good engine doesn’t guarantee much. That is the default for the competitive teams. Even if power and reliability are good, it only puts the teams in a position like 2024 or 2025 where the chassis makes a big difference.

That needs to seen, efficiency of the ICE is king, it is still possible that there are differences in the range of several percentages.

[AR3-GP]

A good engine doesn’t guarantee much. That is the default for the competitive teams. Even if power and reliability are good, it only puts the teams in a position like 2024 or 2025 where the chassis makes a big difference.

That needs to seen, efficiency of the ICE is king, it is still possible that there are differences in the range of several percentages.

I am referring to Red Bull in this case. At best they could hope for PU parity with the others. If they reach that, then there can still be significant differences in performance arising from the chassis.

[Badger]

Too early to be impressed by the RBPT. No major problem, ok, that's good, but apparently nobody used 2026 legal fuels, which they will do in Bahrain, nor they really pushed the cars to evaluate efficiency, battery recharging, mid straight derating. These things will be key performance differentiators so I want to see that before calling me impressed.

I think that is a myth, everyone used the fuels that will be used in the season. What would be the point of using different fuels. What is your source on them using non legal fuels.

Teams did 300-500 laps but you think no one pushed the car to evaluate recharging or derating?

Yes there were multiple sources (Autoracer for example) claiming that they didn't use the regular fuels, even before the tests took place. They didn't use 2025 fuels but a formulation similar to the 2026 ones. Probably the point was to have an "intermediate" test before switching to the 2026 fuels.

Cars will be really pushed when they do race simulations. At that point we'll have a more clear picture.

An exemption was made for Barcelona but it was never reported that everyone was struggling with this. It would be very surprising if all 5 PUs struggled to run their real fuel only a month before the season.