The key traits of Red Bull's first F1 winner visible in its 2023 dominator

Red Bull's first Formula 1 race winner looks very different from its 2023 pacesetter, but there are parallels to be drawn between the RB5 that got the team off the mark in 2009 and the RB19 that secured its milestone 100th grand prix victory.

One car started a legacy, the other stamped its membership card into the highly exclusive ‘100 Club’. On the face of it, there should be very little similarity between Red Bull’s contemporary RB19 and the RB5 with which it secured its first Formula 1 win. The 14 years between them, and the fact that they were built to two very different rulesets, suggests that the paint-job is their only source of common ground. Apples versus oranges, as it were – but that’s not entirely true.

Both cars represent milestones in the Adrian Newey design lineage. Much as the century-hitting RB19 – or more overtly, its RB18 predecessor – has become a trendsetter amid the current generation, the RB5 was something of a tastemaker in tackling the aero regulations devised for 2009. Red Bull showed the way as it revised and refined the ideas on the 2009 car to become F1’s dominant force in the early 2010s, as Sebastian Vettel’s supremacy appeared unassailable at the time.

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Author Jake Boxall-Legge

Having studied Automotive Engineering with Motorsport at the University of Hertfordshire, West Country-born Jake's original ambition was to design racing cars. During a year between studies in which he accidentally rekindled a love of writing, he took up a Master's in Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes. Halfway through his master's year, he was offered a place on the Autosport Academy, conducting occasional freelance duties before becoming the press officer for Formula 2 and GP3 in 2018. Autosport offered him a return to the fold later that year to serve as its Technical Editor. His voice appears on a number of videos and podcasts, and can often be found writing about terrible Formula 1 cars in excruciating detail. In his spare time, Jake enjoys baking and blames his failure to make it past the Great British Bake-Off interviews on his tenuous grasp on choux pastry. His dream is to open a brunch cafe - and his willingness to make outrageous puns in inappropriate situations has earned him the contempt of his colleagues.