Bernie Collins says she is “highly suspicious” about whether the car Red Bull revealed at their launch will be the same when it rolls out for F1 pre-season testing.

Red Bull raised eyebrows ꦜat the unveiling of their 2024 F1 challenger last week when the RB20 emerged with several concepts that were reminiscent of last year’s Mercedes.

These features included a bulging cooling arrangement running across the length of the engine cover and vertical s🍌id൩epod inlets similar to the ones on the W14.

But Sky 🐼F1 pundit and former Aston Mart🐼in strategy engineer Collins has raised doubts about the launch-spec RB20 design, suggesting it could be a ‘dummy car’ to throw rivals off.

“I think maybe years in F1 have made me suspicious, so let’s see the car that rolls out on Day One in Bahrain because I’m not sure it’s g♋oing to be that car,” Collins told the Sky F1 podcast. “This could just be a little joke.”

Asked if it could effectively be a ‘dummy car’, Collins replied: “Yeah, I ꦬam highlꦏy suspicious but let’s see.”

Collins added: “If they do rock up with that car, then it’s a brave, brave move because they could have easily continued to develop the car✃ they had. That would have been, I think, the safer bet.

“The worry is, and we obviously know Adrian Newey and the Red Bull team are very, very good, strong aerodynamic design💯ers, they have proven that year after year, but Mercedes obviously felt it could work when they put that on the first car.

“They obv🐎iously had enough simulation data, and aero data, and all of these things to say this car is the best we can do.

“So something is amiss between what they thought that car cou🧸ld do, and what it could actually do, and have Red Bull done the miss in the other directio﷽n?

“I’m not surprised they’ve been working on it, because as soon as you see another car with a very different concept, you staܫrt to look at have you missed something. Even a slower car, you start to think, is there something there that we’re missing?

“So I’m not surprised that they’ve been looking at it in the wind tunnel an𓂃d not surprised🥀 that they’ve been experimenting with if they can get more out of it.

“I’m just surprised that they’ve gon♋e with it. So they’𒅌ve clearly – if they go with it, they’ve clearly seen something that means they think they can beat their previous-developed car.

“But is there a miss i🐠n the simulation that has also convinced Mercedes over the past two years to stick with it?

“So if that car rocks up, wh🎃ich I’m going to be very interested to sꦬee, Bahrain qualifying is going to be really interesting.”

We won't have to wait long to find out exactly what Red Bull are doꩲing, with the first day of pre-season testing getting underway on Wednesday in Bahrain.