Red Bull reveals shocking new F1 car for 2024

16th February 2024

Simon Ostler

Red Bull Racing’s 20^th F1 car, the RB20, has been revealed for all to see ahead of the 2024 season, and it has certainly caused plenty of intrigue. This was the final car to be fully unveiled before testing gets underway next week, and the team in Milton Keynes have delivered quite the curveball.

While the rest of the grid have been busy fine tuning and evolving their own cars, in many cases taking no small amount of inspiration from the dominant RB19 from last season, genius designer Adrian Newey and his team have been busy chucking that car in the bin and coming up with what looks like a radical new concept.

The ‘P-shaped’ sidepod inlets that have become the status quo for most of the grid in 2024, but the new Red Bull has a totally different design. It features what looks to be an incredibly narrow vertical inlet, something akin to Mercedes’ now infamous ‘no-sidepod’ philosophy.

With reprofiled sidepods mated to a sculpted engine cover, the Red Bull is well and truly the black sheep of the 2024 F1 grid so far. Is this a risk the team needed to take? After such a dominant season in 2023, there could be an argument that more of the same was all that was needed. The team has made clear however that it won’t rest on its laurels, and it will continue to push boundaries to build the fastest car possible.

Whatever the design team have found, you can bet it will be an improvement on what they had before, and that must be a worry for those who are desperately trying to catch up.

It is of course worth noting that we don’t know how any of these cars are going to look when they turn up for pre-season testing in Bahrain. What we see now is not necessarily the final product.

You can bet that there will be even more details to come on this RB20, the front and rear wings, together with the floor, on these launch images have little to no detail at all. Adrian Newey always has a lot of fun when it comes to the launch of his F1 cars, so don’t be surprised if it undergoes wholesale changes by the first race of the season.

One thing that will probably never change on the Red Bull is that livery. It once again remains consistent with the look that has defined the team for two decades. At least it has plenty of paint on it, but we’re past hoping that one day the design team at Red Bull might think of something new.

The Red Bull RB20 will be in action for the first time in pre-season testing from 21^st-23^rd February, ahead of the first round of the 2024 F1 season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with lights out on Saturday 2^nd March.