Pictures: Red Bull RB20 revealed in detail at Bahrain F1 test

The successor to the most dominant Formula 1 car of all time has hit the track in testing at the Bahrain International Circuit today.

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Max Verstappen, the reigning world champion who is seeking to win a fourth consecutive title this year, took the RB20 out as the three-day began.

Red Bull shook their car down at a wet Silverstone on Tuesday last week, two days before holding its official launch at their headquarters. However Verstappen said it was too soon to form any useful impressions of the car at that point.

“It was slippery, wet and cold,” Verstappen told media including RaceFans at the car’s launch. “Everything was fine.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Bahrain International Circuit, 2024 pre-season test — Tall engine cover resembles that on last year’s Mercedes

“The car started up well. It’s about just making sure that once they’ve put the car together, that everything is running because basically from there the car gets sent to Bahrain. And that’s where it really starts, you really start to learn more about the car. You put a proper programme together and you do a lot of different kinds of running.

Verstappen said he was waiting for his first proper run in the car to get an impression of the full scope of the changes made by Red Bull. He had tested a selection of different changes in the simulator.

“I haven’t really done a lot of the total car, like everything together, because constantly you work on development bits, so I still need to do that a bit more,” he explained. “But I prefer to always drive the car in real life first a little bit more to then have more accurate feedback for the sim. But so far I’ve been happy with the sim driving as well.”

Although the team described the car as an evolution of the RB19, which won 21 of last year’s 22 grands prix, it also has several eye-catching differences. Team principal Christian Horner said the world champions had aimed for “marginal gains in all areas” with their latest design.

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“You’re constantly looking to try and evolve. If you look at the attention to detail on the car, there’s some really exquisite detail. At the team, there’s been no complacency. They’ve continued to evolve, to push the boundaries.”

The RB20’s distinctive sidepod inlets and tall engine cover have invited comparisons with Mercedes’ W14, a design that team moved away from following its introduction. “There’s some great innovation on the car as well that will no doubt get scrutinised over the coming weeks,” Horner continued. “Creativity has been strong in the team. You can see that in some of the solutions that they’ve come up with. It’s not a conservative evolution, there’s some great innovation on the car.”

The similarities to Mercedes’ previous design were “not tactical” said Horner, “it’s based on performance through our simulation tools.

“Obviously the car looks quite visibly different in certain areas to last year. Only the stopwatch will tell, but in the virtual world, we wouldn’t have committed it to design if we didn’t feel it was better.”