Why hasn’t Red Bull let Verstappen test the Racing Bulls F1 car yet?

It’s been one of the recurring patterns in the first half of the season: where the Red Bull RB21 car has a very narrow operating window and is particularly tricky to handle, but the Racing Bulls VCARB 02 car has proven to be far more forgiving.

That’s been a factor in the storming debut of Isack Hadjar, but also in the ongoing struggles with Red Bull’s second seat. Early in the year, Yuki Tsunoda impressed at Racing Bulls, but now he’s facing the same difficulties as the previous team-mates of Max Verstappen. The opposite is true for Liam Lawson: after being dropped by Red Bull after just two races, he’s found his confidence again at the sister team – leading to eighth place in Hungary and ahead of Verstappen.

How Racing Bulls deliberately worked on a more forgiving car

It says something about the pressure at both teams and the challenge of being Verstappen’s team-mate, but also about the cars. The Racing Bulls is easier for drivers to extract performance from, and senior figures at the team are open that this was a conscious choice.

“It’s something we have worked on over the winter, and then we realised that we had a nice car to drive,” explained new team principal Alan Permane. “But until you start competing, it’s difficult to judge it. Through that Bahrain test we were never quite sure. After that we were pretty confident, because we ran with quite a lot of fuel that week. When we got to the first races, we realised what we’d done, and that helped lead the rest of the development for this car.”

Permane makes clear that Racing Bulls has been very deliberate in giving its drivers a car they can use. This might seem linked to the team’s DNA as a training ground for rookies, but when Autosport put that to him, Permane said it wasn’t the main focus.

“No, I don’t think so, honestly. I think it’s what we discovered over the winter from last year to this year,” he said. “We made a car, and you’re right, it undoubtedly helps when you have rookie drivers, but I suspect it’s a car that a top-line driver would also find comfortable to drive and would also be able to extract the performance from.”

Would a potential test raise eyebrows at other teams?

Given Permane’s mention of a “top driver”, the inevitable question arises: why hasn’t Red Bull put Verstappen in the Racing Bulls car yet? It would be complicated during a race weekend with all the spotlights and sponsor obligations, but in theory a filming day could work. Each team gets two such filming days a year, with 200km per day allowed on special demo tyres.

Putting Verstappen in the Racing Bulls car for a day could be useful in several ways: Racing Bulls would get a benchmark for the car’s potential and be able to put Hadjar’s performances into perspective, Verstappen’s technical feedback could help the sister team, and above all, it would give Verstappen and Red Bull a clear view of the differences between both cars.

When asked in Hungary if he’d ever been tempted to try the Racing Bulls, Verstappen laughed: “Well, let’s not talk about that.” Sources within the Red Bull team suggest one reason is that the subject could be politically sensitive with rivals. Other teams already focus on the A/B team dynamic, and the FIA intends to tighten the operational regulations (Section F) for 2026 to more clearly define such relationships. Having Verstappen in the sister team’s car might be entirely possible, but would likely raise some eyebrows in the paddock.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella addressed the A/B team issue again during the team principal’s press conference in Budapest, stressing the need for strict oversight: “Certainly, McLaren in the past has raised the question about team independence. It’s a question that should be discussed as part of putting the sport in a very solid, fair position so that any team that operates in a fully independent way is protected against the benefits that can be exploited in being dependent as teams from one another.

“At the moment, we at McLaren trust that the regulations in place and the way they are enforced are already a valid way of mitigating any potential risk associated with connections between teams, like changing from one team to the other from one day to the next. But definitely, we think this is a topic that can be part of constructive conversations in the future to see if there’s a way of approaching the matter of team independence in an evolved way compared to where we are at the moment.”

From that perspective, avoiding even the appearance of impropriety might be the safest option – even if putting Verstappen in a Racing Bulls car would be possible in theory.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, RB F1 Team

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Too late to learn much from a filming day?

It’s also worth stressing that it’s probably already too late for such a test to be genuinely useful. Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has indicated that the two cars are too different for feedback from one to directly transfer to the RB21 – and he speaks from experience.

On top of that, teams are now mostly focused on the 2026 regulations, meaning recent updates have been in the pipeline for a long time and almost nothing new is being drawn up for the current cars. Even if Verstappen would gain useful insights from a filming day, the budget cap, wind tunnel restrictions and looming 2026 regulations would make it virtually impossible to apply them to this year’s car development.