Red Bull Reveals All-New Upgrades On Third Day of Bahrain Testing

Saajan Jogia | Feb 28, 2025

Pictured is Oracle Red Bull Racing’s RB21 - the new car for the 2025 Formula 1 season. / Vladimir Rys / Red Bull Content Pool

Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché has confirmed that upgrades for the 2025 challenger, the RB21, will arrive on Day 3 of pre-season testing. He explained that although these changes were initially planned for the Australian Grand Prix season opener, the team opted to introduce them earlier in order to assess the direction of development.

Red Bull showed strong form during pre-season testing, with the team's senior advisor Helmut Marko confirming that the balance issues from its predecessor, the RB20, have been resolved. With a more predictable and comfortable car, the team has focused on refining its weaknesses rather than opting for a major overhaul, which explains why the RB21 closely resembles the RB20.

As many wondered about the surprising similarity between the two cars, Motorsport-Magazin reported that there was talk in the paddock of a much bigger upgrade for the RB21, scheduled for Friday, the third day of the pre-season test. Waché has confirmed that upgrades will arrive on Friday but stressed that they won't be large enough to make a big impact on performance. He told Planet F1:

“No, it will not be radically different.

“We will evaluate parts. It’s true that, based on the calendar and everything, but I think everybody’s doing the same.

“Nothing has changed compared to previous years.

“You have your baseline car, and you try to have some stuff from the full system of development to come to the track as soon as possible and, based on the capacity of manufacturing the part and everything. you try to evaluate before race one.

“I think we have some new parts coming for day three, but it is not massively different.

“For sure, everybody’s doing this, you have some small parts to evaluate.

“It was planned for race one, but we try to push it a little bit for day three here because it gives us a possibility to see whether the direction is correct or not, but it’s not magic.”

Waché confirmed that the car being tested in Bahrain will closely resemble the version that will race in Australia.

When he was asked how difficult it is to find further performance in the current era of regulations, he explained:

“I don’t know the ceiling.

“I know that it is difficult to find performance. It’s very difficult if you stay in the regulation box. It’s the nature of the regulation, every type of regulation, that after two or three years, you start to be more on the plateau and it’s more difficult in the real world and developments start to be less and, after that, it’s based on risk.

“Us, I’m not sure we are at the ceiling. We can find more potential, maybe… it’s more where you find it.

“If it’s not usable by the driver, it’s a big issue. What we can find in terms of performance, and maybe not the ceiling, is how we can develop the car so that the driver can.”