Red Bull's wind tunnel is three months ahead of schedule
Ahead of the new season, it has emerged that Red Bull's brand-new wind tunnel is ahead of schedule, and it expected to be fully operational from the 2026 F1 season.
Despite winning the Drivers' Championship in the last four years courtesy of Max Verstappen, Red Bull has used an outdated wind tunnel for many years. The old facility that is located near Bedford is over 70 years old, which prompted team boss Christian Horner to call it "a Cold War relic."
Although the Milton Keynes-based squad has made several tweaks and completed a series of updates to the wind tunnel, Red Bull's engineers have encountered many challenges over the years due to the old facility.
Rival teams have also made some heavy investments in their infrastructure recently. McLaren opened a new wind tunnel in mid-2023 after relying on Toyota’s tunnel in Cologne for over a decade, and the Woking-based team's 2024 F1 car was the first one that has been completely developed in the new facility. Elsewhere, Aston Martin has also built a state-of-the-art wind tunnel at its new Silverstone base, although it is not functional yet.
It has now emerged that while Red Bull’s new wind tunnel is only planned to be ready in 2026, its construction is currently three months ahead of schedule. It means that the 2027 F1 car could become Red Bull's first F1 machine to be developed in the new facility.
"Cold war relic"
Red Bull's Christian Horner revealed previously that the Milton Keynes-based outfit's current wind tunnel is outdated, stating, “Our wind tunnel is a relic from World War II.”
Expanding on the team's current struggles, technical director Pierre Waché echoed Horner's words, explaining that some performance issues the Red Bull had last year, were linked to the team's old wind tunnel.
“Some aspects related to the fact that we are not achieving the performance we had assumed are related to the correlation,” Wache noted.
“We are using a rather old wind tunnel and as a result of our last placements in the championship we have fewer hours available than our opponents.”
Marko insists that Red Bull's ageing wind tunnel has also been a significant issue which has held the team's performance back in recent times, but a new wind tunnel should improve the situation in two years' time.
"A modern wind tunnel would help us. Our wind tunnel dates from just after World War II. That, of course, has its drawbacks. It takes a very long time to raise the temperature in it. The tunnel is out of date and I hope that in '26 our new wind tunnel can be put into operation."
