Red Bull's DM-01 Delivers Reliable Baseline Despite Hadjar Crash

Red Bull’s 2026 car showed encouraging pace during the Barcelona shakedown, but the test weekend was disrupted when Isack Hadjar — who topped day one — crashed at the end of day two, forcing spare parts to be flown in from Milton Keynes and sidelining the team for Wednesday and Thursday. That incident kept Max Verstappen off track until Friday and briefly interrupted the program, though Red Bull still completed 185 laps across the opening two days while sister team Racing Bulls logged 319.

The primary objective of the preliminary test — verifying the reliability of Red Bull’s first-ever power unit, the DM-01 — was achieved, with the engine running reliably in both Red Bull’s car (referred to in some reports as the RB22) and customer Racing Bulls. Team principal Laurent Mekies said the power unit had “surpassed expectations” and provided a usable baseline, and Sky Sports commentator Karun Chandhok noted that chassis and power unit appeared well matched during initial running. The DM-01, developed in collaboration with Ford and named for late co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, delivered the mileage rivals found impressive and underpinned the optimistic technical readout from Milton Keynes.

Aerodynamically the new car drew praise despite being the first Red Bull design created without Adrian Newey’s direct input after his spring 2024 move to Aston Martin; technical director Pierre Wache’s group retained Newey-like principles, notably keeping the front wheels as far from the sidepods as possible to reduce tyre wake and adopting push-rod suspension at both ends. That combination of conservative suspension choices and carried-over aerodynamic thinking suggests Red Bull favored a more traditional interpretation of the 2026 regulations. Drivers and commentators described the RB22 as more predictable, with Hadjar saying the 2026 cars “don’t feel too different.” At the same time, former driver Juan Pablo Montoya cautioned that the main risk might lie in electronics and system integration — drivability and smooth power delivery could reveal “glitches” as engineers optimize the package. Taken together, the shakedown left Red Bull technically strong on the power-unit front and aero development while flagging integration and drivability work as the next priorities, with the crash-related parts logistics the only notable brake on early progress.