Red Bull, the Formula 1 champions for the past two years, unveiled their 2012 challenger today, a day before testing kicks off in Spain.

Like all the other new cars, bar the McLaren, the new car features the new stepped 'bulldog' nose.

Adrian Newey, the design genius seen as the man behind the team's successes, said the new model is an evolution on last year's car, with changes to the back made in view of new regulations on the use of exhaust gases and the double diffuser.

Meanwhile, McLaren said today that the exhausts and diffuser shown on the car unveiled last week were plastic, and the real thing will only be shown when the tests get underway. The practice of hiding particular parts of the car during launch is not uncommon and was also resorted to by Red Bull last year,

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.