{"id":416366,"date":"2026-01-16T07:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416366\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T07:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:18:12","slug":"max-verstappen-excited-about-new-f1-season-as-red-bull-unveil-their-2026-car-red-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416366\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen excited about new F1 season as Red Bull unveil their 2026 car | Red Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red Bull formally began their tilt at the forthcoming Formula One season, unveiling the livery for their challenger, the RB22, alongside drivers Max Verstappen<\/a> and Isack Hadjar in a showcase event in Detroit on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Before a highly anticipated season, with a swathe of big rule changes presenting a challenge across the grid, Red Bull<\/a> are the first in what is due to be a hectic period of launches before pre-season testing begins.<\/p>\n

The four-time champion Verstappen finished second in last year\u2019s championship, two points behind McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris<\/a>, but the Dutchman had to extract the maximum from a car that was off the pace for the opening half of the season.<\/p>\n

The team continued development of the car well into the season in order to better understand how it fed into this year\u2019s model and Verstappen was eager to climb behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the new livery, it looks really nice and think it is going to stand out on track this year,\u201d he said. \u201cThe gloss is cool, it is a more retro look, the colour is really bold and blue, I really like it. Seeing it in real life was special and I was really impressed and surprised by how much of a change it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019m excited to drive a car with a completely different look. I\u2019m not sure the mechanics will be happy about the time it\u2019ll take to keep this clean! But, it\u2019s going to look really slick and will be nice for everyone to see out on track.\u201d<\/p>\n

Red Bull\u2019s new car was unveiled in Detroit, in homage to the team\u2019s new partnership with Ford with whom they are building their engines. Photograph: Vladimir Rys \/ Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Red Bull are manufacturing their own power units for the first time in a partnership with Ford and the team\u2019s powertrains technical director, Ben Hodgkinson, expressed cautious optimism that they would be competitive against the more experienced manufacturers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident that the team I\u2019ve built is incredible,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m confident the facilities we put together are going to be a benchmark but we\u2019re 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\u2019ve got are better than everybody else. So watch this space.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull formally began their tilt at the forthcoming Formula One season, unveiling the livery for their challenger,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-416366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}