Red Bull Racing vs Renault F1 Team

Lore & Background

The RB16B won the drivers' title with Max Verstappen in 2021, marking the team's first World Championship title in 8 years since Sebastian Vettel won the drivers' title and the team won the constructors' title in 2013. The RB16 was planned to debut at the 2020 Australian Grand Prix but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it debuted at the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix. The RB16B debuted at the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix.

In Their Own Story

The air in the pit lane at Monza was thick with tension as the 2009 season approached its climax. A Renault R29 sat idling, a ghost of the championships past, while nearby, the sleek, black-and-blue silhouette of the Red Bull RB5 hummed with a new kind of menace. Drivers exchanged glances across the grid, knowing that the era of French dominance was ending, replaced by an Austrian-backed force hungry for glory.

Reader's Guide

The RB16 featured a narrower nose, redesigned barge-board area, smaller side-pod inlets, a large 'cape' element below the nose, raised rear suspension parts, and redesigned front multi-link suspension. For 2021, Red Bull used development tokens to change the gearbox casing shape, rearranging the rear suspension to increase rear downforce. The Honda RA621H engine was brought forward a year to 2021, featuring a more compact camshaft layout, different valve angle, shorter cylinder bore spacing, and a smaller engine with lower centre of gravity.

Did You Know?

• The RB16B became the first non-Mercedes car to win any championship since 2013.
• Honda became the first Japanese and Asian engine supplier world champions of the turbo-hybrid era.
• At the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix, the RB16B wore a red and white livery inspired by Honda's first Formula One win in 1965.
• The RB16 and RB16B competed in 39 races, winning 13 (success rate of 33.33%).