Red Bull first to launch 2026 car under new regulations
Row brewing over possible loophole in engine rules
Red Bull formally began their tilt at the forthcoming Formula One season, unveiling the livery for their challenger, the RB22, in a showcase event in Detroit on Thursday, with Max Verstappen admitting the sweeping regulation changes for 2026 will be a step into the “unknown”.
Before a highly anticipated season, with a swathe of big rule changes presenting a challenge across the grid, Red Bull are the first in what is due to be a hectic period of launches before pre-season testing begins.
The four-time champion Verstappen finished second in last year’s championship, two points behind McLaren’s Lando Norris, but the Dutchman had to extract the maximum from a car that was off the pace for the opening half of the season.
The team continued development of the car well into the season in order to better understand how it fed into this year’s model and Verstappen was eager to climb behind the wheel.
“It’s all still a bit unknown,” said Verstappen in Detroit alongside his new teammate, Isack Hadjar. “It’s a very big change with the engine, the dimension of the car has changed. For the drivers, it will take a bit of time to adjust and that’s why it’s very important during the test days that we are getting our laps in.
“I love the new livery. Seeing it in real life was special and I was really impressed and surprised by how much of a change it is.
“The whole look brings back a lot of great memories of back in the day when I was just starting out in F1 and everything was new. I’m excited to drive a car with a completely different look.”
The rule changes for 2026 are the biggest in F1 for more than a decade and, with the engines and chassis being radically overhauled at the same time, possibly the biggest in the sport’s history. Alongside significant aerodynamic changes, the engines will now operate with a near 50-50 split between electric and internal combustion power, presenting a new challenge to teams and drivers.
Red Bull are manufacturing their own power units for the first time in a partnership with Ford, competing against more experienced manufacturers in Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda.
A row is brewing over interpretation of the regulations already, with Honda understood to have brought to the FIA’s attention its concerns over a loophole it believes has been exploited by Red Bull and Mercedes with regard to thermal expansion in the new engine regulations to generate more power.
However, Red Bull’s powertrains technical director, Ben Hodgkinson, said the regulations were “super, super clear” and any F1 engineer who did not understand thermal expansion did not belong in the sport. “There’s a list of what you’re allowed to do. So I don’t really understand why everyone’s so up in arms about it,” he said.
Hodgkinson, who spent more than 20 years at Mercedes, also expressed cautious optimism that Red Bull would be competitive against the more experienced manufacturers.
“I’m confident that the team I’ve built is incredible,” he said. “I’m confident the facilities we put together are going to be a benchmark but we’re a newcomer. We have had to build factories while people started developing engines. So we started behind but I think the people and the facilities we’ve got are better than everybody else. So watch this space.”
The season begins in Melbourne on 8 March but with the scale of the new regulations, it will be preceded by three pre-season tests. The first is behind closed doors in Barcelona from 26-30 January. Then there will be two in Bahrain, on 11-13 and 18-20 February.

source