Red Bull's new wind tunnel won't arrive until mid-2027, Mekies confirms

Red Bull’s long-delayed new wind tunnel will not be operational until partway through the 2027 season, team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix, pushing back the facility’s debut by at least a full year from its original 2026 target.

The state-of-the-art tunnel in Milton Keynes is set to replace Red Bull’s existing facility in Bedford — a site that former team chief Christian Horner once described as a “Cold War relic”. Despite that characterisation, the Bedford tunnel underpinned four consecutive drivers’ championships for Max Verstappen between 2021 and 2024, including the most dominant season in Formula 1 history in 2023.

“In terms of timeline, it is not ready yet,” Mekies told media. “It’s something that will come online sometime during next season. Is it first quarter, is it second quarter, is it third quarter? We’ll see.”

Mekies said the precise timing will hinge on how long commissioning and calibration work takes once the facility is built. “Most likely for the second part of the 2027 car, and hopefully for most of the ‘28 car,” he added.

The team principal acknowledged that Red Bull is currently operating what is probably the oldest wind tunnel on the Formula 1 grid. “As much as the wind tunnel we are using have been ultimately producing extraordinary results in the last few years, I think you are right in your assessment that it is most likely the oldest one on the grid.”

Despite the delay, Mekies is confident the new facility will eventually deliver a meaningful performance gain — though he cautioned that the benefits will take time to materialise.

“If you jump to a state-of-the-art facility, and the team have really tried to design and now produce something that will put us back at the very first place in that area, of course you expect a competitive advantage from there,” he said. “It’s not going to come up as soon as we switch on everything, but it’s certainly going to unlock potential, and to give the talented people we have in the aero departments another way to express their ideas.”