TEAM PREVIEW: Racing Bulls – All you need to know about the team ahead of the 2026 F1 season

Red Bull’s sister team – Racing Bulls – showed impressive flashes of pace throughout 2025, earning them their joint-best finish of sixth in the Teams’ Championship while Isack Hadjar was rewarded with promotion to the senior squad after a stellar rookie season. With a new rookie driver joining the outfit for 2026, can they pick up where they left off amid sweeping new rule changes? Here’s everything you need to know about them ahead of the new F1 season…

Drivers for 2026

Liam Lawson #30: Best finish of P5, 44 points, 35 starts
Arvid Lindblad #41: Rookie season

To say Liam Lawson’s F1 career has been a rollercoaster is something of an understatement. This time last year he was at the Red Bull senior team as Max Verstappen’s team mate before being demoted back to Racing Bulls after just two rounds of the season, with Yuki Tsunoda – now Red Bull and Racing Bulls’ test and reserve driver – going the other way.

The New Zealander had a solid remainder of the campaign to ensure he would stay with the team for 2026, in what will be just his second full F1 season – he came in as a substitute for the team in 2023 and competed in the final six rounds of 2024, both times replacing Daniel Ricciardo.

With Lawson’s 2025 Racing Bulls team mate Isack Hadjar stepping up to Red Bull for 2026, 18-year-old Briton Arvid Lindblad has been promoted to F1 from Formula 2 and will be the only rookie on this season’s grid.

Having long been a member of the Red Bull Junior Team, Lindblad made the switch to single-seaters in 2022, going on to finish fourth in the 2024 F3 championship, and he became the youngest race winner in F2 history when he embarked on his debut season in the category at 17 years old in 2025.

How did Racing Bulls do in 2025?

Amid both driver and management changes, Racing Bulls had an impressive 2025 as they claimed sixth in the Teams’ Championship. While inexperience showed at times, there were also some exceptional performances to shout about, most notably Hadjar’s maiden podium at the Dutch Grand Prix and Lawson’s run to fifth in Azerbaijan.

As alluded to above, many of the Racing Bulls headlines in 2025 centred on personnel changes. Firstly, there was that aforementioned driver swap after two rounds – with Lawson and Tsunoda trading places – while Team Principal Laurent Mekies also moved to take charge at Red Bull after long-time boss Christian Horner departed in July.

That reshuffle saw Alan Permane promoted from Racing Bulls Racing Director to Team Principal, the first time the Briton has taken on the role of a team boss after a lengthy career in F1.

History

While Racing Bulls are known as Red Bull’s sister team these days, the squad’s origins can be traced back to Minardi – a team based in Italy that competed in F1 from 1985 to 2005. A certain Fernando Alonso made his F1 debut with the team way back in 2001.

Late Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz acquired the team at the end of 2005 and initially called it Toro Rosso (Red Bull in Italian) with the primary goal to nurture young talent and guide them towards the senior Red Bull outfit – future World Champions Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen spent time there in the early stages of their careers before being promoted to the ‘A’ team.

Vettel memorably achieved Toro Rosso’s first pole position and F1 victory at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix – mastering tricky, wet conditions in the process – before Red Bull had reached such milestones.

In 2020 Toro Rosso were renamed as AlphaTauri (after Red Bull’s clothing arm) before becoming RB for 2024, and then finally Racing Bulls for 2025. The squad are still primarily based in Faenza, Italy, but moved their UK offices from Bicester to Milton Keynes, where Red Bull are located.

Greatest achievement

There’s something about Monza. Not only did Vettel’s 2008 success in Italy mark the greatest achievement for the team in their post-Minardi era, but in 2020 Pierre Gasly matched that with a shock win at the same circuit.

Thanks to a well-timed tyre change, Safety Car periods and leader Lewis Hamilton’s penalty for visiting the pit lane when it was closed, Gasly emerged at the head of the field and superbly kept a chasing Carlos Sainz – then of McLaren – at bay to cross the line first.

It was a truly emotional moment for Gasly. Not only had the Frenchman bounced back from his Red Bull demotion but he also paid tribute to his friend and fellow countryman Anthoine Hubert, who had passed away the previous year.

One key goal for 2026

The team’s long-serving boss Franz Tost, who retired at the end of the 2023 season with Mekies replacing him, always harboured hopes of guiding the squad to fifth in the Teams’ Championship. They have come agonisingly close with sixth in 2008, 2019, 2021 and – of course – last year.

However, the sweeping new regulations coming into play for 2026 mean it’s a clean slate for every team on the F1 grid. The competitive order will come down to who has interpreted the new rules the best.

After flashes of success in 2025, Racing Bulls should be aiming to top the midfield but nailing strategy and execution, as well as nurturing the talents of their two young drivers, will be crucial in attempting to make that a reality.