Red Bull Racing Unveils RB22 2026, In-House Power Unit Era Begins

Red Bull Racing has officially unveiled the livery of its 2026 Formula 1 car, the RB22, at a launch event in Detroit, marking the start of a new era as the team debuts its first in-house power unit developed in partnership with Ford.

The Detroit launch, held at the home of Red Bull’s new power unit partner, underlined the strategic significance of the project. The RB22 is the first Formula 1 car in the team’s history to be powered by a unit built internally, and the occasion was used to reveal a show car featuring a refreshed colour scheme after several seasons of largely unchanged liveries.

The RB22 will be driven by four-time world champion Max Verstappen alongside his new team-mate Isack Hadjar. Visually, the car adopts a blue and black palette, with a lighter shade of blue applied in a jacquard-style pattern, while also returning to a glossy finish after years of favouring a matte look.

In keeping with Red Bull’s trademark showmanship, the reveal itself was staged in dramatic fashion. Renowned stunt pilot Martin Sonka was enlisted to tear the cover off the car directly from his aerobatic aircraft, reinforcing the team’s bold and unconventional identity.
 

Beyond the aesthetics, the RB22 represents the most ambitious technical undertaking in Red Bull Racing’s 20-year history. Following the end of its long-standing partnership with Honda, which has since aligned with Aston Martin, Red Bull committed to producing its own power units through the creation of Red Bull Powertrains.

Red Bull Powertrains boss Ben Hodgkinson described the project as a rare opportunity to build both technology and organisation from the ground up, tailored entirely around the forthcoming 2026 regulations.

“I loved the idea of it being a blank sheet of paper, not just the power unit but the whole company,” Hodgkinson said.
“So we could custom-build it to what we knew the regulations were going to be, which was a pretty cool opportunity.”

Hodgkinson acknowledged, however, that the scale of the challenge only became fully apparent once the project was underway, particularly in terms of rapidly assembling a large and highly specialised workforce.

“The gravity of what that meant took a while to really sink in,” he explained.
“Trying to find what’s turned into 700 people in a short space of time has been really challenging.”

According to Hodgkinson, the ambitious nature of the programme has proven to be a defining strength, naturally attracting personnel aligned with Red Bull’s culture and accelerating innovation.

“If you create a really bold and audacious project, it only really attracts bold and audacious people,” he said.
“Those people fit the Red Bull culture absolutely like a glove. It’s brilliant for the rate of innovation, so it’s been an exciting, pretty intense four years.”

With the RB22 and its internally developed power unit, Red Bull Racing enters the 2026 season as one of the central narratives of Formula 1’s new regulatory era. Alongside its ongoing title ambitions with Verstappen, the success of Red Bull Powertrains will be closely watched as a benchmark for whether a fully independent approach can rival established manufacturer programmes under the new rules.