The incident involving Isack Hadjar on Tuesday afternoon damaged the rear of the RB22, forcing Red Bull to skip Wednesday’s running to assess the extent of the damage and evaluate spare parts availability. Having already completed laps over the first two days, the team can take a measured approach, but it is still unclear when they will return to the track.
Hadjar’s crash, which occurred towards the end of Tuesday’s afternoon session, introduced some uncertainty for Red Bull regarding the continuation of their Barcelona testing program. The Milton Keynes-based team will skip Wednesday to allow engineers to take a break and carefully evaluate the damage to the car, carrying out necessary repairs.
In particularly tricky wet conditions, Hadjar lost control at the final corner, one of the fastest on the circuit, spinning and hitting the wall. The impact damaged the rear of the 2026 car, ending his session prematurely.
Team-mate Max Verstappen had completed the morning session, managing just one dry run before the rain arrived. Nevertheless, given the many elements that Red Bull still needs to explore on the new car and its first internally developed power unit, the team had deemed it valuable to run even in wet conditions.
Team principal Laurent Mekies explained that the team is still evaluating its plans for the coming days following Isack Hadjar’s incident. With two full days of running already completed, and considering that all eleven teams are limited to three testing days out of the five available, Red Bull is not obliged to go out on Wednesday.
Beyond taking a day off to give engineers time to review collected data, the decision to skip Wednesday is also linked to the extensive repair work required to fix the car. On Tuesday, Red Bull dedicated significant time to aerodynamic testing, using flow viz paint and rakes mounted behind the front wheels to study airflow.
The main issue, more than the damage itself, concerns the limited spare parts supply: all teams currently have only a small number of newly manufactured components, and in the budget cap era, resources cannot be wasted before the arrival of updates.
“We learned useful things in the wet. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well, but the important thing is that Isack is fine. We’ll do our best to repair the car and understand what lies ahead,” said Laurent Mekies, confirming that the French driver is unharmed following the incident.
“The conditions were really challenging, so it’s very unlucky that it ended this way, but it’s part of the game. There is a lot of work to do on many aspects, and situations like this can happen. Today’s difficulties follow a very, very positive day yesterday, where Isack completed a good number of laps, learning and providing valuable feedback to the engineers.”
“We are trying to analyze what happened and hope to have some answers. The priority now is to assess the damage and understand what this means for our ability to run tomorrow. We only have one day left, so we have to play this card well, and the analysis will still take a few hours.”
Beyond the crash, Laurent Mekies praised the Milton Keynes team for their work during this first part of testing, highlighting the huge challenge of bringing Red Bull Powertrains’ first internally developed power unit to the track alongside Ford.
“We knew it would be a special moment to be here for the first time with the RB22 and our power unit. The past months and weeks have been incredibly intense to be ready, but in the end, we were: on Monday morning, the car left the garage a few minutes after nine with our power unit, and I can only thank and congratulate everyone at Milton Keynes, both on the chassis and power unit side. It was incredible to see it on track.”
“Of course, it’s only the beginning and nothing is perfect, but we were able to run, start learning, and work as a single team. It’s a great satisfaction. It doesn’t change the scale of the journey ahead, but it is certainly a first milestone that everyone at Milton Keynes can be proud of.”
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