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 at the unveilin൩g 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 sidepod inlet🍷s similar to the ones on the W14.

But Sky F1 pundit an🤡d former Aston Martin strategy engineer Collins has raised doubts about the launch-spec RB20 design, suggest🅠ing 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 on𓃲 Day One in Bahrain because I’m not sure it’s going 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 am highly s𝓀uspicious but let’s see.”

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

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

“They obviously had enough simulation data, and aero data, and al🥂l of ꦐthese things to say this car is the best we can do.

“So something is amiss between what they thought that car could do, and what it could actually do, and have Red Bull done the miss in the🙈 other direction?

“I’m not surprised 𓆏they’ve been working on it, because as🥃 soon as you see another car with a very different concept, you start 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 t🅺unnel and not surprised that they’ve been experimenting with if they can get more out of it.

“I’m 𓆉just surprised that they’ve gone with it. So they’ve 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 in the simulation that has also convinced Mercedes ov🔯er the past two years to stick with it?

“So if that car rocks up, which I’m go🍸ing to be very interested to see, Bahrain qualify💟ing is going to be really interesting.”

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