Racing Bulls have been forced to alter their pre-season run plans as it was deemed to be “too risky” to run the VCARB02 at Imola on Monday in case photographs of the car’s livery are leaked ahead of Tuesday’s group F175 launch in London.

This year Formula 1 is hosting a group launch to mark the sport’s 75th anniversary, the first-of-its-kind event taking place at London’s O2 Arena on Tuesday.

‘Too risky’ to run the Racing Bulls livery a day early

However, taking place eight days before pre-season testing begins in Bahrain, the teams haven’t been afford much time to shakedown their F1 2025 challengers.

As such McLaren and Williams both launched their cars at Silverstone last week, putting the MCL39 and the FW47 through their paces, both cars decked out in one-off liveries.

Haas were also in action at the Northamptonshire track on Sunday in a private shakedown, but decided against a one-off livery. It wasn’t long before photographs of the car, the VF25, were leaked online.

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The pictures, which were taken opposite the pit garages at the Hilton Hotel, not only provided initial details about the design direction that Haas but also showed Haas’ 2025 livery.

In order to avoid a similar leak, Racing Bulls have reportedly opted to postpone their shakedown that was scheduled on Monday.

According to Italian publication autoracer.it, because Racing Bulls never planned to film the car using a one-off livery, ‘to avoid possible problems with Liberty Media, which has requested exclusivity on the 2025 liveries for the London event from all teams, the Red Bull-affiliated team has decided to change the day of the VCARB02 filming day.

‘It would have been too risky to show up with the current year’s livery on a circuit like Imola, where it is very likely that some leaked photos will appear on the web.’

The publication revealed that Racing Bulls will instead run the car on Wednesday 19 February, the day after the official F1 launch.

Earlier this month a few details about the new VCARB02 emerged with the car expected to feature not only the Red Bull RB20 rear suspension and gearbox but also the Red Bull’s ‘shark-mouth sidepods’.

According to reports from the Italian media, the VCARB02 will have the ‘now famous inverted L-shaped cooling inlet, with a horizontal and a vertical intake connected only internally’ of the 2024 Red Bull F1 car while also sporting a very different front wing aimed at optimising the airflow through the car body and the ‘new shark-mouth sidepods’.

Drawing on Red Bull’s RB20, even though all the parts Racing Bulls are taking are within the regulations, is likely to once again spark complaints from rival teams about Red Bull having an “A/B team and co-ownership”, as Zak Brown put it last night.

It’s criticism though, that Racing Bulls’ CEO Peter Bayer shrugged off when speaking with PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher.

“Honestly, they don’t irritate me because, having spent enough time at the FIA, I know how other teams collaborate,” he said, referring to his time as the FIA’s secretary general and F1 executive director.

“I said the other day, I think I can say it again – I know for certain that Ferrari and Haas work closer than Red Bull Racing and us. I understand that it’s a cutthroat competition. Everybody’s trying to throw stones into the path of the other one.

“But, if you just look, take a step back and listen to our drivers and the engineers – listen to the feedback. You will hear that our car, it’s a different car. It’s simply not a copy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are in the first place.”

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