Mere hours after revealing a striking special edition livery of their latest challenger, the RB14, Red Bull beat their rival by clocking some mileage. Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo had the honour of sampling the car. The Aston Martin Red Bull team hopes that their 2018 machine will take the fight to Mercedes and Ferrari. They took advantage of one of their designated filming days to run the RB14 on track. As a result, they are now the first team whose 2018 F1 cars have been seen in action.

Sky F1’s David Croft said, “They have got it running, they’ve got it out of the garage and it has come back on its own steam. They’ve done that ahead of Ferrari, ahead of Mercedes, and it’s the first time Red Bull have done this. They’ve prioritised getting to the first test with the car working properly so they can then work on improvements and making it faster. They didn’t have that luxury last year.”

He continued, “Adrian Newey has been told ‘we want a car ready for the first test’ – and that’s what he’s delivered. Teams are limited to 100km in such sessions and must run on demonstration tyres, but the outings are considered invaluable as they enable routine system checks to be completed before the serious business of pre-season testing begins.”

However, it must be said that their radical looking livery is only a test livery. The official one will be revealed when all the teams travel to Barcelona for the official pre-season test sessions. When Ricciardo first took the car for a spin, the Silverstone circuit was damp and they had the opportunity to test the wet weather tires. It isn’t the first time that the Red Bull livery has turned heads, in 2015, they came out with a bold camouflage livery for testing.