Christian Horner: “All cars look similar, only the Ferrari SF-25 stands out for its differences”. The Red Bull team principal has also closely observed the Maranello team's car..

Christian Horner watches the Ferrari F1 car

Formula 1 has already fired up its engines for the first day of testing in Bahrain, with most of the attention focused on Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton’s debut at the wheel of the Prancing Horse. The excitement surrounding this moment has been building for over a year, not just among fans watching on TV but also among other team principals in the paddock. Christian Horner openly admitted as much, and while noting that the 2025 F1 cars all look very similar, he also pointed out that Ferrari has taken a distinct technical direction with the SF-25.

A competitive 2025 F1 season

“We are at the end of this regulatory cycle,” the British manager said in a press conference in Sakhir, “and it’s clear that the cars are converging and look very similar. Perhaps Ferrari is the one that stands out the most in terms of differentiation. The rest of the cars are converging, and this will make the races very competitive this year, to the point that we’ll see some cars performing better on certain tracks while others will excel elsewhere. We might even have eight different winners this year and very open races. It will all come down to extracting the maximum potential from each package and delivering it on track.” – the Red Bull team principal pointed out at the end of the first day of testing in Bahrain.

Christian Horner also dismissed the idea that the RB21, unveiled on Monday morning and immediately taken to the track for a filming day in Bahrain, is too similar to the 2024 RB20: “In reality, every small surface of our car is different from last year’s. If they look similar, it’s because the underlying philosophy remains the same. We needed to improve certain characteristics of the 2024 car, and the team worked extensively on these aspects throughout the winter. But we must not forget that we still won nine races and four sprints with last year’s car. So, the baseline for development was already solid. However, competition is very tight, as we saw last season, and the cars all look very similar. It will be a fiercely contested season from the very first race.” – the Red Bull team boss concluded.