Racing Bulls set to unleash Miami upgrades as midfield battle heats up

Racing Bulls is set to roll out a series of upgrades, starting in Miami, as the team aims to move to the top of the midfield pack.

Alan Permane has detailed how his team will introduce new components over the coming races, as Racing Bulls embarks on a strong development push between now and the summer break shutdown.

Racing Bulls plans Miami upgrades to lead midfield fight

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust.

Racing Bulls has scored points in all three Grands Prix so far, racking up 14 points to occupy seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship at this early season checkpoint.

Following Arvid Lindblad’s strong F1 debut as the 18-year-old took eighth place in Australia, Liam Lawson followed up that score with seventh in China, repeating his Sprint race result, and ninth in Japan.

With the Racing Bulls car slotting directly into the midfield, the Faenza-based squad is set for a steep development curve upon the championships’ resumption in Miami at the end of April, and team boss Alan Permane said the squad has been hard at work back at the factory to prepare for the restart.

“We had a pretty decent upgrade planned for Bahrain, which we will see in Miami,” he told select media, including PlanetF1.com, during the spring break.

“We had another upgrade planned for Montreal. So we will have a sort of quick double hit there.

“There’s no way to bring them both: the Montreal one, we can’t bring earlier, so it’s a slightly strange situation where we’ll bring a quite decent upgrade and new component, and then almost replace it straight away. That’s just the way the calendar has fallen.

“All of our freight has come back from Japan; the same for all teams, so we are going to take the opportunity to do some unplanned work on the chassis. So there are some bits and bobs to do, some upgrades there that weren’t actually planned in until the end of this flyaway sequence. So that helps us there.”

The unplanned nature of the five-week gap in the championship, created by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix in light of unrest in the Middle East, has resulted in the team being in a better position for the restart, with more of the upgrades able to be rolled out with immediate effect.

“There are some parts that we weren’t expecting to get back, and so we’ve brought that forward, but, honestly, the actual cycle of upgrades is pretty well planned,” he said.

“As I say, we have an upgrade due for Bahrain, which, I guess, what it’s allowed us to do is we’ll have more quantities of it for Miami, whereas we may have only had one or two, two or three sets of it for Bahrain, we will have three/four sets of it.

“So it’s allowed us to be a little bit better prepared there. But it hasn’t actually affected that cycle of upgrades, because they’re planned a few weeks in advance anyway, so it didn’t really change much there.”

With Racing Bulls working apace at both its Faenza and Milton Keynes facilities, Permane said the development race in these early stages of the regulations won’t see his team fall behind its immediate rivals.

“I’m very confident that we can keep up, if not do better than the other midfield teams,” he said.

“I think we are starting from a little bit further back than some of them. I think we can do a very good job.

“We already had a good step from Bahrain to Melbourne, as I say, we’ve got another good step coming at the next race, and then another good step from Montreal.

“There’ll be small steps almost every race, and then another two or three large upgrades already planned, and beyond that, so up to the [summer] shutdown, we’ve got a plan.

“So I’m very confident that we can stay with that group; we’re kind of in a group of four, which is Alpine, Haas, and Audi.”

But while perhaps reaching the top of that quartet is achievable, catching the leading teams is a step too far in this first year of the regulation cycle.

“To race the top guys, I’m not sure that’s going to be so easy,” he said.

“Of course, we will do our best, and we will do everything we can, but they’re a bit of a step away.

“Certainly, fighting for podiums looks like it will be tough this year, but let’s see what we can do. We’ll just work as hard as we can. But I’m confident we can stay with, or even increase our competitiveness in the midfield.”

More on Racing Bulls

Liam Lawson reveals why ‘raw’ Supercars dream still appeals beyond F1

F1 2026 uncovered: Racing Bulls quick out the block with updates

How has Racing Bulls made the most of the spring break?

To have such a lengthy gap so early in the championship is highly unusual but, after the onslaught of pre-season testing after the January shakedown in Barcelona being followed by three flyaway races, Permane explained how it’s allowed for the race-travelling personnel to take some much-needed downtime.

“Some areas of the company are working a bit harder than they were planning to be worked, and some areas are working less hard, let’s say!” he smiled.

“Certainly, the race team, we’ve encouraged them to have some time off there. There is some work ongoing here, of course, and they’re a little bit involved in some of the upgrades.

“We’re going to take the opportunity to build a car up so that the design office can see it because I’m sure, as you can imagine, once we start racing, the cars are almost never here at the factory, so we’ve done a little bit of that.

“With an eye on the calendar, and hoping very much that there’s a chance that they will reinstate one or both of these races later in the year – we don’t really know anything, of course, until the Middle East situation calms down, that won’t happen but, if it does happen, we could have a very busy end to the year.

“So I’ve tried to encourage the race team, mechanics, and actually some of the engineers, certainly traveling people will have some time off, but the rest of the factory is actually busier than they would have been.”

After three race weekends, a true picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the VCARB03 hasn’t been fully formed, but Permane reckons it’s proving a solid baseline from which to work from.

“We certainly have a read, I think what we need is more of what we’ve got,” he said.

“So the car works well; it doesn’t seem to have any particularly nasty traits about it.

“We just need more load, which is what we’re bringing. Generally, I would say, it’s similar to last year’s car in that it seems to work pretty well most places.

“I think we understand why it worked better in Melbourne than in the other two races. I think it should work well in the coming months.

“Having said that, Montreal was a race last year where we certainly struggled. It definitely wasn’t one of our more competitive races. We think we know why that was, and we’ve done some work to make sure we don’t repeat those mistakes again.

“I think we’ve done a good job, honestly, and I’m not often self-praising. I think we did a very good job in Shanghai; we managed to score points in both the sprint and main race in Shanghai, where we weren’t really quick enough.

“Honestly, the same in Suzuka; the car worked very well in Melbourne, we weren’t quick enough in the other two, although Arvid did do a stunning job in Suzuka to get into Q3.

“I think we are paying the price a little bit with our performance against the people we’re racing so, certainly, Alpine, who abandoned last season, I’m not surprised to see them where they are.

“We developed our car late into the year, so we expected to start a little bit on the back foot, but I also expect that what we’ve got coming soon, what I know we’ve got in the pipeline, will certainly lift us a little bit more into that midfield battle.

“At the moment, we’re more in the middle to the back of it, we seem to be able to do a very good job in qualifying, and then we haven’t been so so competitive in the races.”

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!

Read Next: Biggest F1 2026 disappointments: Red Bull mismatch, false Williams start, whining drivers