Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has pledged an “incredibly high development rate” for its Formula 1 car in 2026, amid the sport’s new regulations cycle.
The Milton Keynes-based squad will tackle the season, and the new rulebook, with the RB22, the first car it will have powered by an in-house engine, built with Ford.
It enabled the team to lower the bar of expectation for this season, given its combined lack of experience, the latter having been out of F1 since selling to Red Bull in 2004.
Recent revelations about its exploitation of an apparent loophole in the regulations have elevated prospects somewhat, but the new season brings a high level of unpredictability.
Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has already warned that the car that wins the opening race in Melbourne “won’t necessarily have the winning car of the year,” given the exploratory nature of car development in 2026.
And Mekies, speaking to Sky Sports News, has promised that his team will be at the forefront of that.
“We are going to be in an incredibly high development rate season, both on the chassis side and on the power unit side,” he said.
“We believe in our people, and therefore the fact that we’ve put together what we believe is an extremely strong team with extremely strong partners.
“You have seen last year on a season that as the last year of a regulations cycle, you could still see how much the team could do through the season in terms of development,” he said.
“We’ll take that for 2026 multiplied by three or four in terms of development rate, certainly for us in terms of how much we have to learn. So we take it step by step but with the right level of aggressiveness.”
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