The revised RB18 broke cover on Saturday morning wཧhen Sergio Perez joined the action around an hour in to the final day of pre-season running at the Bahrain International Circuit. 

Red Bull’s 2022 challenger has new sculpted sidepods that feature a less aggressive undercut than the previous design as well as bigger air intakes, something that is closer to Ferrari’s approach. A new floor is also being run 🦹by the Milton Keynes outfit on Saturday. 

It comes after Red Bull’s rival Mercedes grabbed attention on the🀅 opening day in Bahrain when it debuted an upgraded W13 sporting a radical ‘no sidepod’ concept thౠat has triggered the first legality saga of F1's new era.

Perez wasted no time as he immediately set the pace on his first push lap out of the pits, posting a 1m34.733s on Pirelli’s C3 compound. He has since been displaced 🎃at the top of the times. 

Red Bull is expected to conduct some performance runs on Saturday, ඣhaving largely focused on&💝nbsp;race simulations across the first five days of winter testing. 

At the end of the se꧑cond day of running in Bahrain, Red Bull’s head o🐼f race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin stated the team had been “competitive without even trying”. 

“It was more of a stop-start day today [Friday], mostly by design,𒅌” he said. “We had a good continuous run yesterday [Thursday], so today was more about exploring and testing different th♎ings. 

“We spent more time🐓 in the garage making changes 🗹to the car and also taking more risks. We learned a lot and gathered a lot of information.

“I’m quite happy with what we found out, we are progressing in different directions and it’s all very positive. We were✱ reasonably competitive at the end without even trying.”

Reignin🦂g world champion Max Verstappen will take over from Perez in the second and final session to round out Red Bu🍎ll’s pre-season test.