2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[ClassicLivery]

I think RedBull might be faster than expected. They introduced a whole new floor on the last test day which needs dialing in.

[f1isgood]

They are not passing anyone on track this year. Its joever. P? and P8 for the foreseeable future.

Let's wait and see what the upgrades bring, they have been shouting about heavy in season development from the get go, updates every race apparently.

That alongside steady weight reduction might get them close to the top by mid season. Will see how well Mercedes and Ferrari develop in season, besides Mcl in the last 2 years everyone has been hit and miss but I'm expecting everyone to find lap time so early in the regs, only difference will be how much.

One thing that I fear is how similar FER and MERC look concept wise, if they copy each other's solutions that might speed up their cars more than RBR who have a more outlier concept.

I wonder if they have taken a similar route as last regulations with regard to a low drag concept that inherently will lack a bit of downforce relative to others. Even in 2022 they did lack a bit of downforce to Ferrari but overall the laptimes were about the same with different parts of the track being strengths for the different cars. McLaren seem to be focusing on downforce alone for now. Ferrari and Mercedes it's unclear but time will tell where they stand.

In any case, at least the car doesn't seem to have fundamental issues like mid corner random steer that was there with the RB20 and RB21.... in that sense there should probably scope for more hit with development and less miss (also because it's no longer ground effect floors.....)

[venkyhere]

Well, after looking at the 'fastest laps' data (of the entire testing), I am now starting to doubt my "RB22 = 4th fastest" conclusion. Spent some time analyzing VER's fastest lap from day3 against LEC's from day3 and ANT's from day2.
While it's generally understood that Mercedes is holding back a lot compared to other teams, and Ferrari is revealing a lot (still not full beans) compared to other teams, the below lap traces are interesting :

https://i.ibb.co/kgxvrgZr/Bahrain-test2 ... t-laps.png

- In the slow corners 1 and 10, LEC using his typical both-pedals-overlap to rotate the car (like he does in a Q lap) results in a cumulative loss of around 0.6-0.7 to both ANT & VER.

- The medium speed section 5-6-7 is the hardest to judge from this chart alone, wr.t how much is deploy-recharge v/s how much is chassis balance or weight, affecting the time spent here

- However the straights and the 11-12-13 long corners are the most interesting. Different locations to deploy/recharge, seems like. However, generally speaking, LEC is deploying a lot in the straights, while the other two are most probably super-clipping and recharging the battery. And VER seems to be the guy recharging heavily, ANT moderately. Assuming LEC has maintained the rulebook 4MJ max SoC swing ; I have my suspicions about the SoC swing window being smaller than 4MJ for the other two, so as to hide pace (VER to a larger extent than ANT).

Hence I am inclined to form a takeaway that it's not only Mercedes, the Redbull is also hiding quite a lot of pace (atleast in Q sims, if not the R sims). Let me know whether I am being an idiot.

It's testing. It's better not to overthink the telemetry from the quick laps. No one has done any serious laps.

Of course, hence I only 'started to doubt'. I am nowhere near "convinced"

[pantherxxx]

Well James Vowles said that Red Bull started to hide a lot of pace after the rivals started to praise Red Bull Ford's energy deployment. Hopefully he's telling the truth.

Also in the last 2 years the problem was correlation, but Red Bull seems to have solved that at the end of last year. That's how they outdeveloped everyone, even Mercedes, despite Mercedes bringing new upgrades to the car until November. So even if Red Bull have some slight aero disadvantage at first, I expect RB to quickly catch up.

[Badger]

There was quite a bit of sandbagging going on with the PU on Friday. This is a comparison between Max’s fastest lap on Thursday vs Friday (blue). Both 1:33.1s.
Around half a second judging by the delta.

[FittingMechanics]

There was quite a bit of sandbagging going on with the PU on Friday. This is a comparison between Max’s fastest lap on Thursday vs Friday (blue). Both 1:33.1s.
https://i.postimg.cc/nrxDg1jL/IMG-2798.png Around half a second judging by the delta.

To me that looks like a different deployment and not a sandbag.

For example, in the white lap on the start straight he is superclipping at higher speed (but this means he harvests less because he starts later) but then pays for it by having less energy on the straight to T4. Blue lap recovers all that lost time and more. Similar things throughout the lap. Whenever there are these big swings in laptime diff that is a different deployment. If he was losing throughout the lap, on a consistent basis that would be sandbagging.

[Emag]

Nope, there is no back and forth between those laps. He is just slower in pretty much every straight. The loss you mention up to T4 is due to bad exit in the white lap. Maybe wheelspin, or losing the rear end out of T2.

Half a second is the upper bound though, maybe closer to 3.5-4 tenths. In any case, it would have been enough to give RedBull 2nd fastest testing time if they wanted to get it.

[FittingMechanics]

Nope, there is no back and forth between those laps. He is just slower in pretty much every straight. The loss you mention up to T4 is due to bad exit in the white lap. Maybe wheelspin, or losing the rear end out of T2.

Half a second is the upper bound though, maybe closer to 3.5-4 tenths. In any case, it would have been enough to give RedBull 2nd fastest testing time if they wanted to get it.

So I guess at T13-T14 where he once again on a white lap superclips at higher speed he again has a moment on T15 exit? How come he gets "those moments" on both spots where he has less energy?

In a few months everyone will understand this is an example of deployment difference. If you decide to super clip at 300 kph instead of 320 kph you will lose time on the straight (compared to 320kph) but then gain it back on corner exit as you'll have more energy to deploy and reach terminal velocity faster.

Teams will work out what is optimal speed to harvest in order to gain the most laptime. Sometimes it may be 320, 310, 300 or any other number. It will probably be more pronounced the longer the straight is afterwards.

[Emag]

Nope, there is no back and forth between those laps. He is just slower in pretty much every straight. The loss you mention up to T4 is due to bad exit in the white lap. Maybe wheelspin, or losing the rear end out of T2.

Half a second is the upper bound though, maybe closer to 3.5-4 tenths. In any case, it would have been enough to give RedBull 2nd fastest testing time if they wanted to get it.

So I guess at T13-T14 where he once again on a white lap superclips at higher speed he again has a moment on T15 exit? How come he gets "those moments" on both spots where he has less energy?

In a few months everyone will understand this is an example of deployment difference. If you decide to super clip at 300 kph instead of 320 kph you will lose time on the straight (compared to 320kph) but then gain it back on corner exit as you'll have more energy to deploy and reach terminal velocity faster.

Teams will work out what is optimal speed to harvest in order to gain the most laptime. Sometimes it may be 320, 310, 300 or any other number. It will probably be more pronounced the longer the straight is afterwards.

Yes, it’s still just a driving difference. What you see there are not big enough differences to justify it with differing deployment strategies.

What you would expect if that were the case, is for the blue lap to save earlier on for example and then deploy much more later in the lap. But you don’t see that. He is just slower in every power-limited section of the track.

For example, 2 laps with differing deployment strategies from the same team :

[Badger]

Nope, there is no back and forth between those laps. He is just slower in pretty much every straight. The loss you mention up to T4 is due to bad exit in the white lap. Maybe wheelspin, or losing the rear end out of T2.

Half a second is the upper bound though, maybe closer to 3.5-4 tenths. In any case, it would have been enough to give RedBull 2nd fastest testing time if they wanted to get it.

So I guess at T13-T14 where he once again on a white lap superclips at higher speed he again has a moment on T15 exit? How come he gets "those moments" on both spots where he has less energy?

In a few months everyone will understand this is an example of deployment difference. If you decide to super clip at 300 kph instead of 320 kph you will lose time on the straight (compared to 320kph) but then gain it back on corner exit as you'll have more energy to deploy and reach terminal velocity faster.

Teams will work out what is optimal speed to harvest in order to gain the most laptime. Sometimes it may be 320, 310, 300 or any other number. It will probably be more pronounced the longer the straight is afterwards.

Yes, it’s still just a driving difference. What you see there are not big enough differences to justify it with deployment differences.

What you would expect if that were the case, is for the blue lap to save earlier on for example and then deploy much more later in the lap. But you don’t see that. He is just slower in every power-limited section of the track.

For example, 2 laps with differing deployment strategies from the same team :

https://i.postimg.cc/DZHyWQKV/IMG-9830.jpg

You can lead a horse to water mate, but you can't force them to drink It's one of the more obvious examples of deployment sandbagging I've seen. Same car, same driver, same low speed shifting (same harvesting), same lap time, but slower SL speed on every straight (and in T12). He makes up the time by having better cornering performance.

By the way, you can't sandbag on corner exit (as suggested) as it is mandated you must deploy the full beans for a certain amount of time to "punch" out of the corners, that's how this powertrain was designed to operate and it's enforced in the rules. So there's no scenario where you decide to superclip less into a corner and then "only" deploy say 250kW on the exit, you must deploy the full 350kW for a certain amount of time before you start the taper. It's faster to drive that way anyways, full power to get up to speed, then you taper.

[Paa]

Btw, what would be the point of being busy sandbagging in a limited test? I never understood that concept.
It is ok, that teams usually don't go full beans qualy laps, always leaving some fuel and maybe not the absolute highest engine mode.

But for regular testing, race sims etc, why would they compromise their program just to hide their pace? I'm not saying this is absolutely non-existent, but never understood the point. What is there to gain from sandbagging?

[f1isgood]

I think they only have one car and probably do not want to push too much. Having said that its unclear if they can check reliability properly if they do this though.

[AR3-GP]

But for regular testing, race sims etc, why would they compromise their program just to hide their pace? I'm not saying this is absolutely non-existent, but never understood the point. What is there to gain from sandbagging?

If you have a rocketship and everyone knows it, they will start to copy your design sooner. If you can avoid attention by driving like the others, the curiosity and focus on your design is less.

[venkyhere]

What is there to gain from sandbagging?

Psychology. Not giving rivals a target to aim - drivers & engineers. Silly as it may sound, given the terabytes of data that rivals can see ; there is enough 'interpretation margin' since the whole thing involves something called 'driver feel' of the grip. It's like forcing your rival to bat first in a cricket game, so that they don't know what's going to be a good score, and how much risk to take, via car setup and/or via driver inputs. Sandbagging also bites the other way, can be punished by one's own car, when finally pushing to the absolute limit one corner after another during Q, if you have been cherrypicking different corners to push and learn the grip limit in different practice laps, but not together in a single lap.
There is also 'reverse sandbagging' where one doesn't sandbag at all, and pushes for practice laptime right from the get-go. Lulls rivals into thinking you have 'more in hand' and makes them push beyond their limit and crash their car.

[dia6olo]

Btw, what would be the point of being busy sandbagging in a limited test? I never understood that concept.
It is ok, that teams usually don't go full beans qualy laps, always leaving some fuel and maybe not the absolute highest engine mode.

But for regular testing, race sims etc, why would they compromise their program just to hide their pace? I'm not saying this is absolutely non-existent, but never understood the point. What is there to gain from sandbagging?

I would argue that teams do "sandbag" as it obviously makes sense to not show all your cards, or at the very least make ones performance difficult to read. With that said, I would also argue that the vast majority of pundits, articles and forum posts that talk "sandbagging" when it comes down to their own team is copium kicking in.
Many are very selective with what is chosen when highlighting "sandbagging" while ignoring the bigger picture that often tells the opposite story.