2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Wouter]

No. Max is an adult. Happy where he is in life.

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Both can be true. His body language shows that he does not tell everything, which isperfectly normal. But his eyes are constantly in the right upper corner. If i remember correctly that correlates with not telling the (whole) truth.

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Max is always telling the truth and you know that. When he moves his eyes in the same direction or rub his nose he is thinking if he will say a certain something or keep his mouth. But he is never lying.

[organic]

Up against it flying the car out to Melbourne

[TNTHead]

No. Max is an adult. Happy where he is in life.

.
Both can be true. His body language shows that he does not tell everything, which isperfectly normal. But his eyes are constantly in the right upper corner. If i remember correctly that correlates with not telling the (whole) truth.

.
Max is always telling the truth and you know that. When he moves his eyes in the same direction or rub his nose he is thinking if he will say a certain something or keep his mouth. But he is never lying.

Max is a straight forward guy who doesnot speak in riddles. But that does not mean that he always says all. Lets see

[Rikhart]

Up against it flying the car out to Melbourne

What?

[Sieper]

If the material is still in Bahrein, flying out from there will be problematic.

[Cassius]

According to Erik van Haren most F1 freight already arrived in Australia. What else do you know @Organic?

[organic]

My info could be wrong. Maybe rather than the car it's personnel. I know lots are stuck

[gearboxtrouble]

My info could be wrong. Maybe rather than the car it's personnel. I know lots are stuck

I think you're referring to some members of McLaren and Mercedes who were in Bahrain for the Pirelli wet weather test. Afaik they were stuck there when airspace around them closed. They should have been able to get out via Saudi or Oman by now.

[Vettel165]

I had a dream last night that Max won a chaos race in Australia with many safety cars…

For me an absolute legend of this sport. Amazing video.

[AR3-GP]

I don't know what Leclerc sees in this car

Despite the enthusiasm for the new technical cycle, Leclerc does not give in to easy proclamations, aware that winter tests often hide the real hierarchies: "The year of Ferrari? It would be a dream, but it is too early to make predictions, especially since we do not know the potential of our rivals. We don't know who is really in the lead at the moment. Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull already seem well prepared and very competitive. I have the impression that the four teams that have recently competed for the championship are quite close, but Mercedes could have a slight advantage, and even Red Bull seems a little above."

https://autoracer.it/leclerc-2026-oppor ... l-davanti/

[Henk_v]

I'm sure come race day there will be surprises. Nobody knows who sandbagged the most. Red Bull has a fair chance and that is more than we could have hoped for and all Max needs....

[Rikhart]

I don't know what Leclerc sees in this car

Despite the enthusiasm for the new technical cycle, Leclerc does not give in to easy proclamations, aware that winter tests often hide the real hierarchies: "The year of Ferrari? It would be a dream, but it is too early to make predictions, especially since we do not know the potential of our rivals. We don't know who is really in the lead at the moment. Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull already seem well prepared and very competitive. I have the impression that the four teams that have recently competed for the championship are quite close, but Mercedes could have a slight advantage, and even Red Bull seems a little above."

https://autoracer.it/leclerc-2026-oppor ... l-davanti/

This just seems like the "hot potato" year, no one wants to have any suspicion of strength over them whatsoever.

It's both bizarre and a bit infantile.

[Emag]

I don't know what Leclerc sees in this car

Despite the enthusiasm for the new technical cycle, Leclerc does not give in to easy proclamations, aware that winter tests often hide the real hierarchies: "The year of Ferrari? It would be a dream, but it is too early to make predictions, especially since we do not know the potential of our rivals. We don't know who is really in the lead at the moment. Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull already seem well prepared and very competitive. I have the impression that the four teams that have recently competed for the championship are quite close, but Mercedes could have a slight advantage, and even Red Bull seems a little above."

https://autoracer.it/leclerc-2026-oppor ... l-davanti/

Part of it is just "covering" in case they are missing something or in case RedBull have a lot up their sleeve compared to what they showed. From an outside perspective it's generally quite hard to properly evaluate RedBull to be fair. They never show anything in sessions that are not worth showing pace. But I am assuming the teams have access to better tools/data to better account for the sandbags.

I guess it's fairly obvious they were holding back a lot in the second week of the test, but how good or bad RedBull is will depend on how much more everyone else left in the table. I personally also expect this season to have a bigger variance in competitive order from track to track. It seems like teams have prioritized different things, which could translate to bigger advantages on some tracks while compromising others. So who knows, maybe Australia sucks for Mercedes and Ferrari.

In any case, if you asked purely from what RedBull showed in testing, I would put them 3rd fastest at best. Maybe Max can sneak into the podium, but if Ferrari and Mercedes are really ahead by as much as it seemed, it will be hard.
And to be fair, it's only Ferrari that showed real pace. I wouldn't be confident in putting Mercedes as the team to beat based on what they showed in the test alone. Their runs were relatively cryptic and hard to properly evaluate.
If it weren't for other teams confidently putting Mercedes at the top, I would just say Ferrari are a good step ahead if you base it on what we got from testing.

[venkyhere]

I don't know what Leclerc sees in this car

Despite the enthusiasm for the new technical cycle, Leclerc does not give in to easy proclamations, aware that winter tests often hide the real hierarchies: "The year of Ferrari? It would be a dream, but it is too early to make predictions, especially since we do not know the potential of our rivals. We don't know who is really in the lead at the moment. Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull already seem well prepared and very competitive. I have the impression that the four teams that have recently competed for the championship are quite close, but Mercedes could have a slight advantage, and even Red Bull seems a little above."

https://autoracer.it/leclerc-2026-oppor ... l-davanti/

Part of it is just "covering" in case they are missing something or in case RedBull have a lot up their sleeve compared to what they showed. From an outside perspective it's generally quite hard to properly evaluate RedBull to be fair. They never show anything in sessions that are not worth showing pace. But I am assuming the teams have access to better tools/data to better account for the sandbags.

Quoting posts from @AR3-GP & yours truly from the Ferrari team thread,

I think the data supports Ferrari using a higher power mode on that fast lap. I calculated the straight-line acceleration peaks for the night sessions and plotted this for the top 4 teams. It is unfortunately only using velocity data from the fastf1 api so a grain of salt might be needed. Anyway, the vertical axis is the peak longitudinal (straight-line) accel. It is more or less always occurring at the T10 exit.



Comments in no particular order:

(1) Ferrari were at the highest accel. level that they showed so far in a best lap (this does not capture any games they could have played on slow laps with higher acceleration levels. I didn't check that)
(2) Merc/RBR/McL are down a lot from their peaks when they did their push laps on the last day.
(3) Mclaren runs are closer to a hypothetical upper limit than Mercedes, since they exhibit consistently higher accelerations in the push laps whether that is due to fuel or power mode.

if I may add...
(4) the bottom-most blue dot from Redbull with 1:34:2 is a bit of an anomaly - it means they were either not deploying at the start of the back straight, or they had a heavy fuel load. This is a 'fast-lap' for sure, so that means they made-up in the straights. Launching from a slow corner exit into a long straight is the most 'optimal' way to deploy - maximum bang for buck/energy - using it for 'low drag penalty' longitudinal (rather than lateral) acceleration, rather than for 'high drag penalty' sustaining top speed. And if a car managed to sacrifice this and used the energy when there is high drag penalty, and still produce a laptime that isn't too far off; that can only mean that the car is very slippery. Or that everyone else is intentionally not deploying the full 4MJ quota.

If this acceleration data can be estimated like this, I am sure the teams already have all this figured out, and drawn much better conclusions, rather than the 'hunches' above.

[Jaymz]

.
Both can be true. His body language shows that he does not tell everything, which isperfectly normal. But his eyes are constantly in the right upper corner. If i remember correctly that correlates with not telling the (whole) truth.

.
Max is always telling the truth and you know that. When he moves his eyes in the same direction or rub his nose he is thinking if he will say a certain something or keep his mouth. But he is never lying.

Max is a straight forward guy who doesnot speak in riddles. But that does not mean that he always says all. Lets see

Max is similar to Michael Schumacher in the sense that we will only hear him admit he was wrong in certain situations decades later. I'm sure if Michael was able now, he would admit more amongst some banter. Would have loved to seen him on some podcasts like with Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard.