2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

It's testing. Why are we comparing laptimes?

[AR3-GP]

Red Bull's secret weapon: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/the- ... trackside/

Red Bull said it last year. It came true.

[Vettel165]

The Race: “Max Verstappen was doing something others were not. He has been an early proponent of using an unorthodox downshifting technique that offered us the first real sign of potential tricks to use high-revving engines to help charge the batteries.”

[Sergej]

Not surprising from Max, he will have spent tons of hours at the simulator to find the best technique with these cars.

Anyway I saw a video of Hulkenberg and he was doing something similar.

[Emag]

It's testing. Why are we comparing laptimes?

Because we can

[FittingMechanics]

There was a lot of meat left on the bone in S2 and S3 on that final lap. Mistake in T8, lock-up in T10, and rears going off in S3. I'm not too sure about this C3 tyre tbh, the C2 looks much more robust at the end of the lap. Max's C2 lap in the morning was arguably better when corrected for temperature and track evolution than those C3 runs. Lando likewise could not improve on the C3 vs the C2.

Max is really really good in T4. And your point about the tires could be true, although track temp at the end of the day was a couple of degrees cooler compared to Norris set his lap with the C2s. Might have just been Max overpushing it a bit.

Looks like McLaren uses battery in the S2 and last straight. Verstappen uses it at the start of the lap.

This was true most of the day, interesting that there is divergence in deployment strategy. Maybe tire heating related? McLaren can keep tires cool so is able to deploy later in the lap?

[AR3-GP]

It's testing. Why are we comparing laptimes?

Because we can

I think it's noise. It isn't a qualifying session.

[organic]

Maybe red bull have pulled a blinder in regards to harvesting and built a gearbox/engine around extreme harvesting approaches.. let's see if this continues. And how much the look of the current car evolves. Currently it looks fairly vanilla on the grid

[Emag]

It's testing. Why are we comparing laptimes?

Because we can

I think it's noise. It isn't a qualifying session.

I mean at least its something. This first day a lot of teams were doing different things so its hard to compare really, but its just a little bit of fun.

In terms of tangible things. The downshifting to first for Max is present in the telemetry between the fastest laps. Lando (or anyone else as far as I checked), does not do this.

Edit: The T4 assessment was wrong. Max just has a much higher minimum speed at the apex.

At the moment, I find these deployment strategies quite interesting. Teams will optimize for their package’s strength and it could be that drivers of the same team have different preferences too. It might be a big differentiator in the season.

McLaren for example, changed their strategy completely from the morning session with Oscar to Lando in the afternoon. As far as I checked. Max and RedBull were deploying the same way in their push laps.

[Emag]

I don’t know if it means anything, but the RBPT revs quite a bit higher during the slower speed corners compared to the Mercedes.

[venkyhere]

[lio007]

I'm not buying what he's selling, but the reliability is impressive.

I'm not sure... Racing Bulls had a pretty bad day!

[Luscion]

Max: “We had a good day today - we got in a lot of laps and tested different programmes. Red Bull Ford Powertrains is still a completely new project, compared to others, so there is so much to keep learning and figuring out ahead of the first race. We went through a lot of testing procedures that we might run into during a race weekend. This might be more straightforward for a PU manufacturer who have been in the game a long time, but when you are new, you need to test it all. Of course, we also did a lot of normal running. Everyone is running completely different programmes, so we are not focusing on lap times and the standings, but instead focusing on understanding the car and the tyres."

[AR3-GP]

I'm not buying what he's selling, but the reliability is impressive.

I'm not sure... Racing Bulls had a pretty bad day!

Lindblad had a great morning session. They are a new manufacturer. I hear it was just a water leak and that may have been chassis side. Its not going to be perfect but this has been solid enough to do their run plan at RBR. This is also why you want engine customers. Whatever they learn from the problems with the customer team will feed back earlier to improvements of the PU.

[f1isgood]

I think RBPT have certainly so far looked significantly better than any expectation that was set for them from the outside. Everyone spent the entire of last year saying their engine will be --- and so far I don't think we have had serious indications of that being the case. With no institutional knowledge this is actually extremely remarkable. But then, they can be the kings of testing and go kaboom in the races for all I know. So I will wait.