Red Bull’s 2024 F1 car revealed

Oracle Red Bull Racing has taken the wraps off its 2024 Formula 1 racer, the RB20. As the name implies, it marks the team’s 20th year in F1, a significant achievement in a dreadfully expensive sport where teams come and go on the whims of sponsor winds. 

The RB20 was revealed at the Red Bull Technology Campus in Milton Keynes, U.K. Not surprisingly, the car has not changed much from last year’s championship RB19, itself an evolution of the RB18. Even the livery stays the same.

The RB19 won 21 of the 22 Grand Prix races in the 2023 season. Driver Max Verstappen had sealed his third world championship by round 17 in Qatar,. At the end of the season, he and teammate Sergio Perez came in first and second in the 2023 points standings. The untouchable duo tallied 451 more points than the next-closest challenger, Mercedes.

In the process, the Honda 1.6-liter V6-powered RB19 became the most dominant car in F1 history. It broke the record set in 1988 by the also Honda-powered McLaren MP4/4, which won 15 of the 16 races that season. The RB20 continues to use Honda engines, because why mess with success?

Twenty years is an eon in F1 terms. Red Bull Racing made its debut at the 2005 Austrian Grand Prix with the RB1. Current driver and three-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen was only eight years old at the time. At the time many, including former Red Bull driver David Coulthard and 13-time Grand Prix winner, thought the team was simply a branding exercise to sell an energy drink. However, Coulthard was convinced to come on board to a team that consisted of a few hundred people. Today, the outfit employs 1,500.

In the intervening two decades, the team injected some much-needed fun into the sport. Coulthard’s leap into a Monaco swimming pool wearing nothing but a Superman cape to celebrate his first podium with Red Bull was an indicator of things to come. 

Now that the RB20 has been revealed, all 10 cars for the 2024 season are known. Drivers, start your engines.