Red Bull were forced to rethink their preseason testing program at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya after new signing Isack Hadjar crashed in wet conditions Tuesday.
The 21-year-old French driver, promoted from Racing Bulls, lost control at the final corner during a closed-door afternoon session and spun backward into the barriers.
Team principal Laurent Mekies said the extent of the damage was still being assessed before the team decided how to proceed for the rest of the week.
Red Bull, now running their own engine operation, have already used two of their three allotted test days and may delay further running until Friday if necessary.
“What is important is that Isack is OK, and we’ll try our best to repair the car and see what comes next,” Mekies said in comments to the FIA.
“The priority right now is to assess the damage to the car, to see what it gives us in terms of opportunities to run in the next days.
“We only have one day available left, so we have to make sure we play that card carefully. It’s an analysis that will still take a few hours.”
The incident came after Hadjar described Monday’s dry running as “pretty productive” after completing numerous laps in the RB22 chassis.
The five-day shakedown will be followed by two preseason tests, open to the media, in Bahrain in February.
Only Red Bull, with four-time world champion Max Verstappen testing in the morning, and Ferrari ran Tuesday because of the weather forecast.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton said it had been a challenging day, with rain arriving around 10:30 a.m., but still productive, with about 120 laps completed by Ferrari.
“We got a lot of information from the car today. We definitely need to keep it up,” said the Briton, who has yet to drive the car in dry conditions. “There were no major issues. We just need to get some more days like this.”
The 2026 season will mark the start of a new engine era with an overhaul of the technical regulations.
World champions McLaren postponed their track debut until Wednesday because of the weather and will now take part in the final three days of testing.
