Ranking every Red Bull F1 car

Red Bull’s Formula 1 history is a blur of blue, red and yellow liveries, world championship glory and Adrian Newey genius.
That makes it difficult to differentiate between the classics, the dogs and the ‘merely’ good cars it has produced.
But The Race is equal to that challenge and we have ranked all 19 of its F1 cars from worst to best.
This is not only based on the obvious metrics such as championships won and race victories, but also the pace relative to rest, their significance in F1 history and their place in the Red Bull F1 story.
The result is an order that contains a few surprises, showcasing what Red Bull has done right and wrong over the past 20 or so years.

00:00 Intro
00:16 Number 19
01:16 Number 18
02:30 Number 17
03:09 Number 16
04:07 Number 15
04:48 Number 14
05:46 Number 13
06:43 Number 12
07:38 Number 11
08:27 Number 10
09:30 Number 9
10:17 Number 8
11:13 Number 7
12:20 Number 6
13:16 Number 5
14:17 Number 4
15:29 Number 3
16:25 Number 2
17:24 Number 1

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Red Bull’s Formula 1 history is a blur of blue red and yellow liveries World Championship glory and Adrien Nei genius that makes it difficult to differentiate between the classics the dogs and the merely good cars it has produced but the race is equal to that challenge and we

Have ranked all 19 of its F1 cars from worst to best this is not only based on the obvious metrics such as championships one and race victories but also the pace relative to the rest their significance in F1 history and their place in the Red Bull F1 Story the

Result is an order that contains a few surprises showcasing what Red Bull has done right and wrong over the past 20 or so years 19 Red Bull rb2 the 2006 rb2 was the first true Red Bull designed fully under the energy drinks Giants ownership but also the worst Adrien Yi

Arrived in February that year too late to salvage a car he described as having poor downforce handling badly and plagued by gearbox on reliability while Nei focused on the longer term Red Bull battled to get the best out of the car preseason running was limited by overheating problems leading to Bodywork

Changes that cost performance while the switch from Cosworth to Ferrari engines didn’t yield the expected benefits in fact the lack of development steps for the Ferrari customer engine meant binning off that deal to Tor Roso and Landing A Renault Supply was a newy priority the car worked reasonably in

Slow Corners allowing David Kar to take third at Monaco but it struggled in the faster stuff and only scored points seven times 18 Red Bull rb1 having made a Shak but race-winning starts to the V6 Turbo Hybrid area in 2014 Red Bull regressed alarmingly in 2015 with a

Troubled rb11 the primary problem was the Runo engine not only did Runo fail to make the performance gains anticipated but it was also unreliable there were driveability problems in the first half dozen races in particular and engine development progress was also too slow however there were also car

Weaknesses Beyond those caused by the need to make setup compromises to compensate for the lack of power F1 tweaked its regulations in 2015 15 to eliminate the unsightly noses of the preceding years but it wasn’t until race five in Spain that Red Bull’s shortnose design was successfully crash tested and

Ready to race it took further mid-season upgrade packages to get the car working as anticipated and give drivers Daniel Ricardo and Daniel Kat confidence behind the wheel over the second half of the year the Red Bull rb1 was generally the third quickest and at its best on lowspeed tracks but it wasn’t fast

Enough as the team endured a winless season for the first time since 2008 17 Red Bull rb3 the 2007 Red Bull was the first entirely conceived under the technical leadership of Nei but despite the switch from Ferrari to Renault engines it wasn’t very successful behind the scenes Red Bull was still growing

With major investment in its infrastructure but on track the car was ertic it could be fast especially in the wet but there were also weekends where it was nowhere Nei pointed to reliability problems hampering the development of a car he felt was a solid base aerodynamically and mechanically

The high point was the European Grand Prix weekend at the nurur ring where Mark Weber finished third and David kard fifth but that was one of only six races in which the rb3 scored 16 Red Bull RB 13 the 2017 switch to high down Force cars presented Red Bull with a huge

Opportunity when it catastrophically squandered the rb13 won three races but also proved unreliable on top of its perennial problem during the middle 2010s of Rena engines being down on Power and it’s had aerodynamic problems the increase in car width from 1.8 to 2 m led to the quality of Red Bull’s wind

Tunnel data being compromised by the car being closer to the walls the result was a poorly balanced car further compromised by having to run less downforce to compensate for the lack of power during this period Adrian newi he had taken a step back from day-to-day involvement but he was tasked with

Overseeing upgrades that turned a car that was as much as a second and a half off the pace early on into one that was more competitive and better balanced later in the season an upgrade at the Hungarian Grand Prix that changed the side pods and diffuser transformed the

Car and made it significantly better in the slower corners but it was never close to being a championship threat 15 Red Bull rb1 the first Red Bull F1 car wasn’t strictly speaking a Red Bull yes it had the name but this car was largely the product of design work done before

Red Bull bought the underachieving Jaguar team the Cosworth engine wasn’t the most powerful the car was middling at best on downforce and a little draggy but it was solid enough what was really impressive was how much red bull got out of it the team was aggressive in extracting the performance as team

Principal Christian hoer said work was done to transform the arrow balance and weight distribution in the first half of the season the rb1 was a consistent Point scorer but results became patchier as Rivals got their act together later in the season but it exceeded expectations and proved Red Bull wasn’t

The no hoper some viewed it as 14 Red Bull rb16 the rb16 was hugely successful in its Beast manifestation but we’ll come to that later in its original form it was a disappointment while Mercedes dominated Red Bull won just twice the first Victory came in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone

Where Mercedes suffered from rear tire blistering although Max for stens victory in the Abu Dhabi finale was on Pace correlation issues meant that the team struggled to get to grips with the car it also proved difficult to make the car work well across a wide range of

Corners early in the season there was what chief engineer Paul Monahan called a split between the high and low speed Corners Red Bull gradually got on top of this although the car continued to have a weakness in the entry to medium speed Corners that was iated but never

Eliminated it was not an easy car to drive the team was confident the car was fundamentally sound but couldn’t make the changes during the season needed to exploit that potential given it required modifications to the architecture and the lack of time in the condensed covid-19 delayed season 13 Red Bull rb2

The Red Bull rb2 was second best in 2016 which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider it won only two races and finished almost 300 points behind Mercedes the rb2 was visibly an evolution of the unsuccessful 2015 car but with significant repackaging in particular of the front end it also

Featured an improved Renault power unit that was only giving away 20 Brak horsepower to the standard setting Mercedes by the end of the year this allowed it to win twice with Daniel Ricardo only being denied a Monaco Victory by a pit stop blunder chief engineer Paul Monahan characterized the

Rb12 as very nicely balanced from the start that remain the case even as the rate was increased as the year progressed the car’s two victories came in Spain where Max for staff and one on his Red Bull bow and Malaysia where Ricardo triumphed after Lewis Hamilton’s fiery engine failure the rb12 at least

Got Red Bull back to winning ways but it was still a long way off being a strong enough all round package to threaten Mercedes 12 Red Bull RB 10 the introduction of the 1.6 L V6 Turbo Hybrid engines in 2014 bought Red Bull’s first spell of dominance to a juddering

Halt and the responsibility for that lay firmly at the door of engine Supply Renault preseason testing was a painful affair with all sorts of problem problems with burning Bodywork that wasn’t down to a calling problem but mechanical failures that caused fires Red Bull managed around a third of the

Mileage of pace set to Mercedes Red Bull performed miracles to allow Ricardo to finish second in the Australia season opener only to be disqualified for exceeding the fuel flow limits as the season progressed the Renault engine improved in terms of power and reliability and Red Bull won three times

However the victories for Ricardo in Canada Hungary and Belgium were all on weekends when dominant Force Mercedes had problems the lack of exhaust blowing due to rule Chang meant the car lack grip in the corner exit phase which made life difficult for Sebastian vettle in his final Red Bull season but overall it

Was a decent car aerodynamically 11 Red Bull rb14 while the rb14 only finished third in the championship it was Red Bull’s most convincing car since the introduction of the V6 Turbo Hybrid engines it went toe-to-toe with both Mercedes and Ferrari on occasions winning four races the car was a significant departure from its

Predecessor the troubled rby 13 of 2017 it featured an increased wheelbase and greater rake the old problem of the weakness of the tag hoer badged Reno engine was still a limiting factor and the Red Bull was generally at its best on less power sensitive circuits the

Fact the car carried a little more drag than its main Rivals also contributed to this however the rb1 14’s prodigious development rate meant that by the end of the year it could still be relatively competitive even at less favorable tracks the car is significant as it marked the beginning of Red Bull’s path

Back to title winning success 3 years later 10 Red Bull rb4 the Red Bull rb4 makes the top 10 despite being a bit of an embarrassment for Red Bull Racing not because it was terrible but because Junior Team Toro Roso beat it to the honor of taking the first victory for a

Red Bull design in F1 this was at a time when customer cars were allowed so Tor Roso used essentially the same car something that was outlawed 2 years later Tor Roso even finished a head in the championship with its Ferrari engine version of the rb4 there was of course a

Big positive to this because Red Bull had designed a winning car and the main team halfed the performance deficit to the front and made big reliability gains the aerodynamic concept was not dramatically different to the 2007 car but there were major mechanical changes this allowed the weight distribution and

The aerodynamic sense of pressure to be moved further forward the car proved particularly good in fast Corners allowing Mark Weber to qualify on the front row at Silverstone where the rb4 was the quickest of all through the ultra fast cops corner while it took just one Podium finish and managed only

Sth in the championship the rb4 was the car that acted as a stepping stone to Red Bull’s first era of dominance nine Red Bull rb5 the Red Bull RB 15 started 2019 around a second off the pace but it made dramatic improvements over the year the car featured an Innovative

Multi-link upper Wishbone in the front suspension which allowed greater ride height control with steering lock applied but while that worked well there were aerodynamic problems what chief designer Paul Monahan described as a large aerrow shakeup happened across the first part of the Season that transformed the way the car worked in

Particular it was front Wing tweaks culminating in a minor end plate change in Austria that transformed the car vastly improving the balance and setting it on a path that meant it had a very strong end to the season that turned the car into a winner taking the first

Victory of Honda’s return to F1 in Austria Max foren added further wins in Germany and Brazil to cap a landmark first year for the Red Bull Honda partnership eight Red Bull rb8 the Red Bull rb8 was initially knocked back in terms of pace compared to its successful predecessor by rule changes limiting the

Geometry of the exhaust exits these demanded the exhaust must face rearwards with a position I diameter and angle of the final 100 mm of the pipe tightly mandated Red Bull initially planned to use duct to recreate the exhaust blown Arrow effect but this was not considered

Legal that led to the introduction of a cander effect exhaust late in preseason testing it wasn’t until midseason in a new Bodywork package introduced at the European Grand Prix that the car worked as well as it should have done this used exhaust gases to pull the air flow over

The top of the side pods that could then be directed to the diffuser sides after a patchy start the car became a regular winner in vettel’s hands as he could use the exhaust blowing effect to balance up oversteer and the car was robust too As proved when vettle sealed the

Championship in the Brazil finale despite his first lap clash with Bruno senz Williams narrowly defeating season long rival Fernando Alonzo seven Red Bull RB 16b so why does the Red Bull RB 16b get its own entry when it was just an evolution of the only modestly successful 2020 car thanks to the

Requirement to carry over most of the design in the wake of the co9 pandemic striking well it’s because it was a dramatically different competitive proposition thanks to a combination of Regulation tweaks and shrewd changes by Red Bull rules-wise floor regulation changes the FIA said were to prevent downforce levels growing and

Overstressing the unchanged parelli tires played against low rake Mercedes and therefore favored High rake Red Bull but the car still needed to be improved New Year Red Bull opted to use its limited upgrade tokens to change the gearbox casing and therefore the rear suspension that allowed Red Bull to

Adopt a Mercedes style swept back rear suspension that increased the the potential for downforce generation at the rear this meant it could produce prodigious amounts of downforce albeit while carrying a little more drag than title rival Mercedes thanks to its high rate concept there were also Honda power

Unit changes that improved packaging and performance this turned the car into One Max for stappen took to his first world championship orbe it with Red Bull missing out on the constructor’s crown six Red Bull rb9 we’ve already talked about the problems of the Red Bull rb8

Of 2012 well the rb9 of 2013 was the fully realized version of the car and it utterly dominated the car retained the high rate concept Red Bull had increasingly exploited over the previous years and featured a cander effect exhaust that energized the brake duck winglets and the diffuser sides it also

Had a side pod undercut very deliberately profiled to act effectively as a duct and was designed with a great Mastery of Vortex generation in short this was the peak manifestation of the cars produced under the 2009 to 2013 regulation cycle there were occasional Tire degradation troubles something Red

Bull tried to pin on the car being too fast for the tires but overall it dominated the season in particular after the August break when vattel racked up nine consecutive wins that Runner success was partly down to pushing on with developments while main rival Mercedes focused more resources on its

2014 rule change car five Red Bull RB 6 the 2010 Red Bull RB 6 was the team’s first championship winner and brought the exhaust blame diffuser back into F1 nei’s first Port of Call when it came to working on that was asking engine partner Reno to dig out the work it had

Done on engine characteristics with Williams almost two decades earlier fundamentally the car was an evolution of the Red Bull rb5 which we’ll come to in a moments it was therefore the first and thanks to the subsequent rule changes only Red Bull designed fully around the double diffuser the car was

Lengthened with the rear suspension featuring an extreme angle for the front leg of the rear lower Wishbone that along with a narrower gearbox increased the potential for downforce at the rear to add to that the exhaust blew into the side of the diffuser making it massively more effective in terms of producing

Downforce the car won nine races but was comfortably the best of 2010 and should have added many more victories but for unreliability and the infamous Turkish Grand Prix Collision that wiped out Waring teammates Sebastian vettle and Mark Weber having already clinched the Constructor Championship vettel’s victory in the Abu Dhabi finale earned

Him his first driver’s Crown four red bu rb5 the red bu rb5 didn’t win a championship but it could have done and had the double defuse have been ruled illegal as new he felt it should have been it surely would have the skinny aerodynamic rule changes of 9 created

The opportunity for Red Bull to make a big leap forward and the rb5 was the most radical of the 2009 cars more so than the famous Brawn the car featured pull Rod rear suspension a geometry that had fallen into disuse in F1 this was a move designed to optimize the potential

For downforce production at the rear a lowered gearbox combined with this to help lower the center of gravity the car also featured an Innovative nose with reduced area thanks to its u-shaped top and bottom surfaces it was outstanding in fast corners but less nimble in slower turns benefiting from an

Unprecedented development rate including introducing the double diffuser for the sixth race of the Season at Monaco a change that required the repositioning of the front and rear suspension the car was a front runner throughout the season despite not taking as many victories as it should have done due to unreliability

And Driver errors the car won six races including Red Bull’s first win in China and was on average the fastest across 2009 and that’s what makes this car so important as it laid the foundations for Red Bull’s first era of dominance three Red Bull rb18 Red Bull utterly nailed

The new ground effect regulations introduced in 2022 with a car that also laid the foundations for its record-breaking dominance the following year nei’s knack for understanding how to balance up the complicated performance equation played a key role in this given redville didn’t have many problems with purposing it’s significant

That new e design Focus was on the suspension significant improvements were made over the season with a reduction in weight vital doubly so given it allowed the weight distribution to be shifted rearward to create a a more responsive car that built on the strengths of a car that started out already very quick

Particularly in a straight line the rb18 was hugely successful in its own rights winning 17 out of 22 races but only taking eight pole positions given Ferrari was often the faster over qualifying lap the 2023 car was a direct evolution of the rb18 with mechanical tweaks and a significant step forward in

Terms of aerodynamic performance that made it utterly dominant two Red Bull RB 7 the Red Bull RB 7 is too often forgotten but of all the team’s cars the dominant 2011 machine has the best average in terms of single lap Pace it only failed to set the fastest lap of a

Race weekend once in Korea where McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton took the only non- Red Bull pole position of the year the rb7 was the peak of the exhaust blame diffuser cars thanks to an upgrade introduced late in testing this place the exhaust exits low down just inside

The rear tires both cold and hot blowing could be called on with hot blowing created by retarding the ignition allowing the gas flow to be maximized when the driver didn’t need the power at the wheels but was still hard on the throttle this meant tremendous rear

Stability Nei also hit on the idea of repackaging the kurur batteries inside the gearbox bell housing that cost it around 40% of the energy and often meant is overheated but with the extra power always there for qualifying laps and the starts this well- packaged car proved Untouchable and Sebastian Fett’s Mastery

Of driving exhaust blowing cars meant he was a dominant Champion one Red Bull rb9 the Red Bull RB 19 has to be number won through its sheer dominance it won 21 out of 22 Grand Prix in what was by many statistical measures the most dominant season in world championship history

However in terms of innovation it was as new we put it a very close evolution of the rb-1 18 meaning it owed its success to the foundation of the 20122 car the rb9 produced the most downforce across a wide range of ride heights was stunningly fast in races even though

Front tire warm-up trouble sometimes meant it wasn’t the best in qualifying and was strong on the Straits thanks to being able to run less Wing thanks to the effectivess of its underfloor it also featured prodigious anti-dive on the front suspension and thanks to adding a structure to the top of the

Gearbox to mount the front legs of the upper Wishbone to anti squat at the rear and Red Bull dominated with limited developments most notably two packages modifying the side pods first in aaban then in Hungary it followed the lead of the rb8 but did so to brilliant effect