Racing Bulls is set to shake down its new VCARB03 over a two-day outing at Imola.
Racing Bulls is set to carry out a pre-season two-day shakedown of its new car at Imola, starting on Tuesday.
The Italian squad showed off its new livery for F1 2026 at a massive collective launch event with Red Bull and Ford in Detroit in the United States last week, and will carry out a car shakedown at Imola this week.
Following on from Audi and Cadillac carrying out shakedowns of their new cars by using one of their two permitted filming days for the year , Racing Bulls is set to follow suit and get some early kilometres racked up with its new VCARB03.
On Tuesday, the Faenza-based squad is set to head to nearby Imola to carry out a two-day shakedown, which will be carried out using different regulatory allowances.
For the first day, Racing Bulls will use a ‘demonstration event’ [DE], which the regulations define as permitted for competitors purely for marketing or demonstration purposes.
Two such events per competitor are permitted during a year. DE running only permits competitors to a maximum of 15 kilometres of driving with a current-year car.
On Wednesday, the team will then use one of its two permitted filming days for the year, following in the footsteps of Audi and Cadillac. Both drivers, Liam Lawson and Arvin Lindblad, are expected to get the chance to drive during the day.
A filming day permits a team to carry out a maximum of 200 kilometres of track time, with a recent regulatory change doubling this allowance from 100 kilometres.
As is usual, any team carrying out a demonstration or filming day must use specifically-provided Pirelli compounds for the purposes on its on-track running.
Filming days not only provide teams with an opportunity to record promotional and marketing material for their own use but, if cashed in during the pre-season, also serve as an accepted way for teams to blow off the cobwebs from the winter break.
This means the drivers re-adjust after a longer-than-usual spell out of the cockpit, whilst giving the trackside and garage crews time to sharpen back up, whilst also allowing the team a chance to catch any minor gremlins in the car that could mean a more serious loss of track time once official pre-season testing begins.
While Racing Bulls carried out its season launch in tandem with stablemate squad Red Bull Racing, the Milton Keynes-based team won’t be carrying out a similar shakedown, with the RB22 making its track debut during pre-season testing.
Once the VCARB03 takes to the track in earnest to begin the official testing programme, which commences with a five-day event in Barcelona between January 26th and 30th, team boss Alan Permane said he expects development to be frenetic in the early stages of the new rules cycle, with updates even for the first race of the year in Melbourne.
“I’m pretty sure most people, us included, will [bring] an update [to Australia],” he told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive interview at the end of 2025.
“The car we test with in Barcelona won’t be the car we take to Melbourne. I’m sure there’ll be a significant update.”
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Permane went on to explain that the team is facing “exactly the same problem” of trying to push development of their 2026 cars as much as possible ahead of the new season while ensuring that parts are produced in time.
“We’ve known the regs for a while. We’ve been able to work on the car in the wind tunnel since January 1 [2025],” he said.
“Now, we’re all faced with exactly the same problem.
“The later you develop your car, the faster it will be, in simple terms.
“You want to keep it in the wind tunnel as long as you can. You want to finalise the mechanical designs as late as you can.
“The installation of the engine, with the radiator installation, all that has an effect on the sidepod installation, which has an effect on the floor, which has an effect on the downforce.
“Everything, everything you do is geared up for performance, so you kind of define that [timeline] yourselves.”
“Of course, we make it as difficult for ourselves as we can, because we want the maximum performance. So we’ve got our factory working absolutely flat out, certainly both in design, finishing off the bits of design for release, for first testing and first race.”
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