Red Bull hit the track for a shakedown filming day at Silverstone on Tuesday, ahead of the launch of the new RB20.
The eagerly awaited Red Bull RB20, the successor to RB19 – F1’s most dominant car ever – will be unveiled at a special launch ceremony at Milton Keynes on Thursday, February 15th, with PlanetF1.com in attendance.
Ahead of that launch, Red Bull has headed to Silverstone to carry out a filming day shakedown of the new car which, for this year, allows teams to carry out 200 kilometres of driving with the latest spec F1 cars in order to carry out filming and promotional work.
Red Bull shakedown filming day at Silverstone
The cars must be fitted with special Pirelli tyres which prevent the teams from being able to exploit the filming day for any sort of performance learning, with the only advantage of running such shakedowns being able to ensure the car is firing up and all systems are communicating properly.
Every team is permitted two such filming days over the course of a season, with most usually opting to use one up before pre-season testing, in order to ensure no time is wasted in the precious three days of official testing.
200 kilometres adds up to a grand total of 33 laps permitted for both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to dust the cobwebs of the winter off before launching the car and heading to Bahrain for official pre-season testing with the RB20.
According to a report in Dutch media, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is in attendance at the filming day shakedown as an internal investigation into Horner’s alleged behaviour is carried out by Red Bull’s Austrian parent company.
Between the two drivers, Verstappen and Perez secured 21 wins from 22 races with the RB19 – meaning a huge uphill task to achieve an even better season with RB20 – although this year’s calendar will have a record-breaking 24 rounds.
Ferrari is also set to hit the track on Tuesday, with a shakedown of the SF-24 following the unveiling of the car around lunchtime, while Aston Martin and Haas have also hit the track for shakedowns with their new cars in recent days – the AMR24 and VF-24 both being taken to Silverstone for a filming day.
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