Red Bull's new wind tunnel to come online during 2027, says Mekies
According to Autosport, Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has given a timeline for the team's long-awaited new wind tunnel: it is not ready yet and should start work sometime during the 2027 season. Verstappen has named it as a reason for optimism.
This report has not been officially confirmed. We will update it if that changes.
A facility Red Bull has waited for
According to Autosport, Red Bull now has an outline for when its new wind tunnel will go into use. The report, published at the Mexican Grand Prix weekend, says team principal Laurent Mekies described the facility on the Milton Keynes campus as "not ready yet" and expected it to come online sometime during next season. We could not find a second outlet or an official team statement, so the timing should be treated as reported rather than confirmed.
What Mekies reportedly said
Autosport reports that Mekies expects the tunnel to give Red Bull a competitive advantage once it is operating, but warned the benefit will not appear immediately. Commissioning and calibration work still has to be done, and he said the gain "is not going to come up as soon as we switch on everything". He expects it to unlock potential for the aerodynamics department.
The report adds that the tunnel is most likely to matter for the second half of the 2027 car's development and, hopefully, for most of the 2028 car. Max Verstappen is said to have told Autosport that it cannot help with the initial design of the RB23, which is already under way, but could help with development during the season.
Background
Autosport notes that Red Bull's current tunnel is the oldest on the grid. Former team principal Christian Horner once called it a "Cold War relic" and compared working with it to reading "two different watches" because of correlation problems. McLaren is cited as the example of the opposite path: after using Toyota's tunnel in Cologne from 2010, it has run its own facility since summer 2023. Aston Martin has a modern tunnel at Silverstone, though Autosport says its benefits have not yet shown on track.
What it means
The report is a reminder that a new tunnel is not a quick fix: teams usually need time to understand and exploit one. According to the report, the 2027 car's basic design will largely be set before the facility is running.
