Red Bull brought its RB11 2015 Formula One car out in camo to test at Jerez this weekend. Sure, it's a bit terrible in terms of sponsor visibility, but can we keep it anyway? Seriously? The camo looks fantastic.
Red Bull has always had one of the easier Formula One cars to spot aside from the fact that Toro Rosso exists. Sure, Toro Rosso always uses an artsier drawing of the red bull on its sides, but Red Bull themselves keeping the wacky zebra look would fix any confusion once and for all.
Red Bull, like all the other teams who got left in the dust by Mercedes, claims to have "learned from last season," per Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey in a team press release.
Red Bull and Toro Rosso are the only teams sticking with Renault power for 2015. Christian Horner explains it's made their relationship a lot closer, and that they're hoping that it finaly leads to good results on track:
The relationship with Renault is a lot closer now. Red Bull is the only partner for Renault now, through ourselves and Toro Rosso, and that focus from Renault together with a close involvement with our design team is yielding good results and a far closer integration between the power unit and the chassis side. Working in unison with Renault we can really make some big steps forward this year.
Adrian Newey warns that it still may be a while before the Red Bulls are up to snuff anyway:
We have been working very hard with our partners Renault to help them develop the engine. What we have to remember is that the internal combustion engine and its very complicated associated items, the ERS and turbocharger, are long lead time items. Those are things where if one team takes an advantage then it takes time to overthrow that or get back on a par with or hopefully ahead.
Hoo boy. This sounds a lot like Ferrari's disclaimers about 2015 being another "development year." Horner is obviously the more optimistic of the two, saying that the goal is still to catch up to Mercedes:
Our target is simple: to close down the gap to Mercedes yet further. We were the only team other than Mercedes to win a grand prix in 2014 and we won three with Daniel Ricciardo. Our target is to close the gap down and put Mercedes under as much pressure as we possibly can. We know what we're aiming at, we know what we need to achieve and I believe that with the RB11, with the drivers we have and with the new structures put in place we should be able to do that.
The team isn't releasing a lot of technical information about the car just yet, but I see a thumb nose, keeping in line with Force India's and Williams' of the new front end rules.
Red Bull also took some more detailed shots of the car off track, back in Milton Keynes.
Part of what's nice about the zebra camo is the clever way they've hidden the protrusion for the thumb nose.
This is the kind of fresh livery I've been looking for, I guess. Zebra camo.
There's also a video of it running, in case you want to hear the whirrr and hummm of a hybrid V6: