2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[f1isgood]

I remember how comfortably the car was gapping the third best car. Comfortably podium contender even on its worst days.

DRS system was due to weight loss attempts unironically. Austria was a setup issue due to sprint weekends and that is still present in the team.

Australia was fine.

RB18 understeered the whole time but I'm not going to argue about that further. My point is the Rb22 doesn't have to be a rocketship that is being hampered by 20kg of weight. It would be competitive on pure laptime against the front runners just by dropping 20kg and whatever extra weight is needed so they can play around with the ballast.

The point is simple. Weight reduction made the RB18 absolutely dominant. Weight reduction might make the RB22 fight for podiums.


Don't believe in this potential. They can't easily get rid of the 20 kilograms. It'll take one whole year. By the end of the year they might get close to the top but they'll start 2027 behind.

I am just shocked that they're behind their competition everywhere. While they'll spend resources reducing Weight the competitors will add performance. Its a never ending chase. They're not the best team in F1. If they were we would have seen them blow up twice but from much higher positions.

[AR3-GP]

The point is simple. Weight reduction made the RB18 absolutely dominant. Weight reduction might make the RB22 fight for podiums.


Don't believe in this potential. They can't easily get rid of the 20 kilograms. It'll take one whole year. By the end of the year they might get close to the top but they'll start 2027 behind.

I am just shocked that they're behind their competition everywhere. While they'll spend resources reducing Weight the competitors will add performance. Its a never ending chase. They're not the best team in F1. If they were we would have seen them blow up twice but from much higher positions.

Why do you expect them to be dominant? There are other good F1 teams. All they need is to be competitive considering the big transition in many areas of the team. From what we are uncovering, there is the potential to be competitive. Furthermore, now we know most of the pace deficit is weight, not a fundamentally wrong aero concept. This car would have fought for pole and the win in Australia if it were 20kg lighter. They would have done that without a Mercedes PU.

[AlexP]

It's not 30kg. You need to factor in for the ballast required to match the minimum weight for the driver.
The RB22 is 19kg overweighted compared to the minimum weight.

Minimum weight in qualy is 772.4 this year, for the race 770.4kg.

I don't think that's correct. The regulations state the following:

https://i.postimg.cc/hG71GFdN/image.png

724 + nominal tire mass in the race
726 + nominal tire mass in qualifying.

We don't know what the nominal tire mass is and there is no reason for it to be published anywhere.

https://i.postimg.cc/rpW5k166/image.png

I may well be wrong, but at the start of the year there was already a discussion about the minimum weight reported by the teams; a few articles were published, with teams such as Williams and Mercedes reporting the car weight of 772 kg , Williams even specified 772.4 kg (qualy weight), whilst Ferrari, on the other hand, stated in its technical specifications that the car weighed 770 kg (race weight).

[Paa]

Idk, but the news of being ~20kg overweight is really positive to me. I feel much better as this is a clear reason for (most of) the deficit and the solution is pretty straightforward. Much better than vague correlation issues and stuff. So at least the problem and the solution is clear.

On the other hand it is a bit worrying how can they be so heavy compared to the rest of the leading teams and how quickly they can reduce the extra weight (if at all).

[f1isgood]

The point is simple. Weight reduction made the RB18 absolutely dominant. Weight reduction might make the RB22 fight for podiums.


Don't believe in this potential. They can't easily get rid of the 20 kilograms. It'll take one whole year. By the end of the year they might get close to the top but they'll start 2027 behind.

I am just shocked that they're behind their competition everywhere. While they'll spend resources reducing Weight the competitors will add performance. Its a never ending chase. They're not the best team in F1. If they were we would have seen them blow up twice but from much higher positions.

Why do you expect them to be dominant? There are other good F1 teams. All they need is to be competitive. There is potential to be competitive. This car would have fought for pole and the win in Australia if it were 20kg lighter. They would have done that without any compression ratio tricks, and without a Mercedes PU.

I am not expecting them to be dominant. I just expected them to have a chassis that is undercooked (understandably), but behind Mercedes/Ferrari "slightly". Not behind Mercedes and Ferrari customer teams. It is one thing to be where McLaren are (which is where I expected Red Bull to be) but another thing to be behind Haas/Alpine on merit.

[AlexP]

They're saying that once max isn't in the car (the condition that the weighing was made with) you still have to account for the driver ballast (the weight that max is under the 82kg driver minimum weight) which isn't taken out of the car as it's under the driver seat. Max is just over 70kg, so the driver ballast is ~10kg. Meaning that red bull is probably around 20kg overweight

Much more believable.

Yes, but in the photo it’s Hadjar’s car at the weighbridge or am I missing something?

Ok sure hadjar. I don't know hadjar's weight but afaik max is one of the heavier drivers on the grid. Hadjar is pretty short so I'd say 65kg is safe. So 17kg driver ballast can explain a big portion of the weight excess?

These are just rough calculations, but if the reports are correct, Piastri and Norris weigh roughly the same, 75kg with all the equipment , plus the car’s 697.5kg it should be 772.5 and they would be right on the weight limit at McLaren for qualify.
So if Norris and piastri weigh 75 kg with all the equipment it should be 4.5 kg heavier than Hadjar, if we subtract the 4.5 kg difference in ballast from the RB22, it should drop to 712. So, in theory, it should be 712 – 697.5 = 14.5 kg overweight compared to McLaren who sits pretty much at the limit. It could all be wrong, but I think it should be about right. Correct me if i'm wrong please.

[Emag]

Yes, but in the photo it’s Hadjar’s car at the weighbridge or am I missing something?

Ok sure hadjar. I don't know hadjar's weight but afaik max is one of the heavier drivers on the grid. Hadjar is pretty short so I'd say 65kg is safe. So 17kg driver ballast can explain a big portion of the weight excess?

These are just rough calculations, but if the reports are correct, Piastri and Norris weigh roughly the same, 75kg with all the equipment , plus the car’s 697.5kg it should be 772.5 and they would be right on the weight limit at McLaren for qualify.
So if Norris and piastri weigh 75 kg with all the equipment it should be 4.5 kg heavier than Hadjar, if we subtract the 4.5 kg difference in ballast from the RB22, it should drop to 712. So, in theory, it should be 712 – 697.5 = 14.5 kg overweight compared to McLaren who sits pretty much at the limit. It could all be wrong, but I think it should be about right. Correct me if i'm wrong please.

Unless Hadjar is overweight, he should be a couple of kilos lighter than both Lando and Oscar. They're ~10cm taller than Hadjar if you go by the official numbers. Although, as I write this, I realize I might have missunderstood your point.

In any case, RedBull definitely has a lot more to gain with weight reduction than McLaren.

[organic]

Ok sure hadjar. I don't know hadjar's weight but afaik max is one of the heavier drivers on the grid. Hadjar is pretty short so I'd say 65kg is safe. So 17kg driver ballast can explain a big portion of the weight excess?

These are just rough calculations, but if the reports are correct, Piastri and Norris weigh roughly the same, 75kg with all the equipment , plus the car’s 697.5kg it should be 772.5 and they would be right on the weight limit at McLaren for qualify.
So if Norris and piastri weigh 75 kg with all the equipment it should be 4.5 kg heavier than Hadjar, if we subtract the 4.5 kg difference in ballast from the RB22, it should drop to 712. So, in theory, it should be 712 – 697.5 = 14.5 kg overweight compared to McLaren who sits pretty much at the limit. It could all be wrong, but I think it should be about right. Correct me if i'm wrong please.

Unless Hadjar is overweight, he should be a couple of kilos lighter than both Lando and Oscar. They're ~10cm taller than Hadjar if you go by the official numbers. Although, as I write this, I realize I might have missunderstood your point.

In any case, RedBull definitely has a lot more to gain with weight reduction than McLaren.

The above calculations assume a 5kg difference between hadjar and Norris/piastri

[Emag]

These are just rough calculations, but if the reports are correct, Piastri and Norris weigh roughly the same, 75kg with all the equipment , plus the car’s 697.5kg it should be 772.5 and they would be right on the weight limit at McLaren for qualify.
So if Norris and piastri weigh 75 kg with all the equipment it should be 4.5 kg heavier than Hadjar, if we subtract the 4.5 kg difference in ballast from the RB22, it should drop to 712. So, in theory, it should be 712 – 697.5 = 14.5 kg overweight compared to McLaren who sits pretty much at the limit. It could all be wrong, but I think it should be about right. Correct me if i'm wrong please.

Unless Hadjar is overweight, he should be a couple of kilos lighter than both Lando and Oscar. They're ~10cm taller than Hadjar if you go by the official numbers. Although, as I write this, I realize I might have missunderstood your point.

In any case, RedBull definitely has a lot more to gain with weight reduction than McLaren.

The above calculations assume a 5kg difference between hadjar and Norris/piastri

It would be 7-8kg at most so that seems reasonable. My number is based on comparisons between friends of similar height differences who are definitely not in peak physical shape

[AlexP]

Ok sure hadjar. I don't know hadjar's weight but afaik max is one of the heavier drivers on the grid. Hadjar is pretty short so I'd say 65kg is safe. So 17kg driver ballast can explain a big portion of the weight excess?

These are just rough calculations, but if the reports are correct, Piastri and Norris weigh roughly the same, 75kg with all the equipment , plus the car’s 697.5kg it should be 772.5 and they would be right on the weight limit at McLaren for qualify.
So if Norris and piastri weigh 75 kg with all the equipment it should be 4.5 kg heavier than Hadjar, if we subtract the 4.5 kg difference in ballast from the RB22, it should drop to 712. So, in theory, it should be 712 – 697.5 = 14.5 kg overweight compared to McLaren who sits pretty much at the limit. It could all be wrong, but I think it should be about right. Correct me if i'm wrong please.

Unless Hadjar is overweight, he should be a couple of kilos lighter than both Lando and Oscar. They're ~10cm taller than Hadjar if you go by the official numbers. Although, as I write this, I realize I might have missunderstood your point.

In any case, RedBull definitely has a lot more to gain with weight reduction than McLaren.

I think McLaren can only go under the weight limit and start playing with ballast; Red Bull can gain around 0.5 seconds thanks to the weight reduction, in addition to all the benefits that come with it

[Paa]

I guess shedding all extra weight would put Red Bull in around the ballpark of Ferrari.
Then they would just need to find an other ~0.5s, solve the reliability gremlins and operational issues (pit stop, race starts, finding optimal setup etc) to have a good fight for WDC.

We are getting closer!

[AR3-GP]

I guess shedding all extra weight would put Red Bull in around the ballpark of Ferrari.
Then they would just need to find an other ~0.5s, solve the reliability gremlins and operational issues (pit stop, race starts, finding optimal setup etc) to have a good fight for WDC.

We are getting closer!

It depends on the track. Verstappen would have been around 0.5 second off pole in Australia if he got a lap in. That would make him a pole contender if the car was at the weight limit. They would have done that without a Mercedes PU.

[Emag]

I guess shedding all extra weight would put Red Bull in around the ballpark of Ferrari.
Then they would just need to find an other ~0.5s, solve the reliability gremlins and operational issues (pit stop, race starts, finding optimal setup etc) to have a good fight for WDC.

We are getting closer!

It depends on the track. Verstappen would have been around 0.5 second off pole in Australia if he got a lap in. That would make him a pole contender if the car was at the weight limit. They would have done that without a Mercedes PU.

16-17kg is quite a lot though, so in that hypothetical scenario they might have had a car good enough for pole in Australia. We have these rough 0.3s per 10kg estimates but it might be more with these cars. Something about China didn't agree with this car for some reason, but in Australia they didn't look bad at all. There's a lot of doomposting here based on a sample pool of 2 races. You have to give it a little bit more time to see where they stand exactly in relation to the others.

[pantherxxx]

How long until Adrian comes back to the team? I don't think he wants to design cars at Aston if the engine is so bad.

[johnnycesup]

Am I the only one suspicious that the only two numbers beyond the decimal point in that entire table are 0 and 5?

EDIT: just saw the picture. So maybe that's the precision of the scale? Kinda disappointing.

Anyway, If Norris, Leclerc and Gasly are a bit clser to Max size than Hadjar size, the weight deficit for RBR might be closer to 10kg