Red Bull changed their pre-season approach with the RB14 after suffering from slow starts to both the 2016 and 2017 campaigns. In previous years the team had delayed the car's launch to allow more factory development time, but analysis showed this strategy left them with an uncompetitive package at the season opener, even if the cars improved as the year progressed. Team principal Christian Horner revealed that bringing the launch forward would allow more on-track data collection and give engineers a head start on real-world setup work.
The RB14 was publicly unveiled in February, and Daniel Ricciardo completed a shakedown of the car at Silverstone one week before pre-season testing officially began in Barcelona.
The RB14 competed at a time when the Renault power unit remained the primary limiting factor for Red Bull's championship aspirations. Despite consistently strong chassis performance from the Milton Keynes-based team — and Adrian Newey's continued aerodynamic contributions — the power gap to Ferrari and Mercedes remained a chronic constraint.
The season saw both drivers deliver strong performances and podiums, but championship contention proved out of reach. Ricciardo secured a memorable victory in Monaco, where his wheel gun suffered a failure during a pit stop and he continued to win the race on three effective tyres. Verstappen, who was battling mechanical and racing reliability issues of his own, took wins in Austria and Mexico among others.
The 2018 season also became notable off-track for the announcement by Ricciardo that he would leave Red Bull at the end of the year to join Renault, seeking a change of environment and a different project. His departure was a significant moment for the team, as he was one of the sport's most popular drivers and had been paired with Verstappen since 2016.
Ricciardo and Verstappen wore special cowboy-styled race suits at the United States Grand Prix in Austin as a tribute to Texas, one of the more distinctive off-the-grid moments associated with the RB14's season.
The RB14 stands as the bookend of a lengthy period in which Red Bull used Renault customer power, a relationship that had delivered four consecutive world championships between 2010 and 2013 but produced increasingly difficult seasons as the turbo-hybrid era placed new demands on the power unit. The switch to Honda for 2019 — initially seen as a gamble given Honda's troubled recent return to Formula One with McLaren — would ultimately prove transformative, leading to the championship-winning campaigns of subsequent years. The RB14 season, while competitive in patches, underscored why the change was necessary.
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