Red Bull showcases RB21 for 2025 F1 season

The energy drinks giant unveils its 2025 F1 contender on the eve of pre-season testing

Red Bull has taken the covers off the car Max Verstappen aims to conquer his fifth straight Formula 1 drivers' title with, the RB21.

Ahead of F1's three-day winter test in Bahrain which kicks off on Wednesday, Red Bull was the last team to unveil its updated car design for the upcoming season, the final one under the current ground-effect based regulations cycle that will be driven by Verstappen and his new team-mate Liam Lawson.

Sporting a very similar livery to last year's car, which had already been revealed at last week's F1 75 launch in London, the RB21 is an evolution of the RB20 and has undergone a variety of changes to address the car balance issues that plagued its predecessor, although the low-light studio images released by the team still carefully kept most of its secrets hidden from view.

Verstappen and Red Bull started the 2024 season in dominant form, but as McLaren caught up and then overtook the Milton Keynes-based team, Verstappen and especially team-mate Sergio Perez started to struggle much more with balance problems on the RB20. It took until September's Italian Grand Prix for Red Bull to gain a deeper understanding of where it had gone wrong, but by that time it was too late to avoid slipping to third behind McLaren and Ferrari.

Red Bull Racing RB21

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

According to technical director Pierre Wache, Red Bull has been hard at work to make its new car easier to balance and set up, but without compromising the car's peak performance potential.

"The main thing that you are trying to achieve is a balance between making a car that is quicker than the others and making it nice to drive so that drivers can extract the most from it," Wache told Motorsport.com. "You know that if you increase the [operating] window you also reduce the overall potential.

"In 2023 we were proved that our direction was correct because we were quicker than the others. Last season we were proved that we were not correct. Every time there is a limit when the balance takes the benefit compared to the overall potential of the car. We have to fix it for this year."

Formula 1's pre-season officially gets under way on Wednesday at 7am GMT, when testing starts in Bahrain.