There hasn’t been too much to shout about for Red Bull’s second Formula 1 team since the current regulations cycle started in 2022, but that could all be about to change.
RB, which started life as Toro Rosso, emerging from the ashes of Minardi in 2006, finished ninth and eighth in the last two editions of the 10-team Constructors’ Championship, notching up sporadic points finishes and only a single top five, courtesy of Pierre Gasly at Baku in 2022.
The team, which is primarily based in Faenza, Italy, but has aerodynamic and R&D resources in the UK, enjoyed a strong ending to the previous rule set when it amassed 142 points and finished sixth in the table.
After a languid start to the current ground-effect era, its management is eager to replicate that upward trajectory as the car platform continues to mature.
The early part of the regulations’ penultimate season this year has offered some evidence to support that: Yuki Tsunoda, now in his fourth campaign with RB, scored points in four of the first seven races, while Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth in the Miami sprint. Heading into the European leg of the calendar, RB was already only six points shy of its 2023 total, and well on the way to eclipsing it. Winning the so-called ‘midfield’ battle between the bottom five teams is top of its priorities and, at time of writing, looks to be within reach.
Fast starter
Although RB has undergone yet another re-naming exercise after the end of a four-year title partnership with the AlphaTauri clothing brand, the current VCARB 01 Honda builds on learnings from the previous AT-badged, Honda-powered cars.
‘We believed in the baseline concept of last year’s car, evolved it for this year, and just carried that aerodynamic goodness forwards’
Jody Egginton, technical director at RB
RB applied upgrades to the AT04 up until the final race of last season as it was trying out aerodynamic solutions that it could carry through to the VCARB 01.
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