Red Bull RB22 revealed in fresh images ahead of Barcelona pre-season testing

Michelle Foster
Red Bull RB22

Red Bull unveil the RB22 ahead of Barcelona run

Red Bull has released a video of its RB22, shrouded in darkness and red light, ahead of the car’s first official laps of the pre-season in Barcelona on Monday.

Having unveiled the team’s season in Detroit earlier this month, along with its new look, Red Bull has now released images of its F1 2026-spec RB22.

Meet the Red Bull RB22

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While several of its rivals, such as McLaren and Ferrari, completed shakedown runs ahead of pre-season running, Red Bull’s first on-track appearance came at the Circuit de Catalunya on Monday.

In Spain, teams have five days of running at the Spanish circuit, but are only permitted to run on three.

As track-action in Barcelona began, Red Bull announced: “The team’s season will officially fire up as the RB22 runs the Red Bull Ford Powertrains’ power unit, the DM01, for the very first time.

“Max Verstappen and new teammate Isack Hadjar are both set to get behind the wheel and put RB22 through its paces, debuting their new helmet designs and Sparco race suits.”

This season’s Red Bull RB22 will be powered by the team’s very first in-house power unit built by Red Bull Powertrains in conjunction with Ford.

Verstappen, who lost the title to Lando Norris last season, says he’s relaxed ahead of the new campaign.

He said on Team Redline Twitch stream: “For myself, I feel good. I’m still very relaxed because you can’t really know at the moment, of course, how competitive you’re going to be. So, yeah, we’ll see.

“I’m pretty chilled; I don’t stress too much because it’s bad for you, and it’s not going to change the result anyway.”

Although Red Bull has yet to run the RB22, the team’s sister team Racing Bulls has been out on track in its VCARB03 that also runs the DM01 engine.

That, says former F1 driver Giedo van der Garde, is an advantage for Red Bull as it means the engine has already covered several laps, giving Red Bull a better indication as to how it performs.

“The sister team has already driven a few laps,” he told Racingnews3y65. “That’s an advantage, that they have probably already learned some things from that. Of course they hear something about that. They have enough engineers on that.”

“That’s already positive, that they had that. It also expresses a lot of confidence in why they are like: ‘We’re not going to do that. We will be right there’.”

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