Formula 1 commentator Martin Brundle offers a potive assessment of Red Bull’s initial testing of its in-house power unit, conducted during a five-day pre-season shakedown at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The sesons occurred behind closed doors, echoing past reliability worries from the 2014 V6 turbo-hybrid introduction, when vehicles struggled to complete many laps.
Red Bull faces added complexity under the latest technical rules, having developed the engine in partnership with Ford. Nevertheless, the power unit demonstrates strong reliability, logging more than 100 laps on its debut day with driver Isack Hadjar behind the wheel and accumulating further mileage throughout the week.
Brundle Highlights Red Bull’s Preparation
“They’ve done really well, haven’t they?” Brundle remarked. He recalled a tour of the engine facility led by Christian Horner, Red Bull’s former team principal and CEO, over a year and a half ago. “I thought, ‘my God, this is unbelievable.’ The scale of it, the number of people and the facilities and the dynos they had there, so I’m not that surprised, if I’m honest. I know they’re new to Formula 1 power units, but they’ve a lot of good people there, a lot of resource and it’s a great facility.”
Red Bull benefits from data shared by its customer team, Racing Bulls, which contributed extenve laps through drivers Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson, complementing efforts from Hadjar and Max Verstappen. Brundle views this dual-team setup as a key edge over emerging rivals like Audi and the Honda-powered Aston Martin, which operate with ngle teams.
“Ferrari looks pretty solid as well,” Brundle added. “I think the teams that have the biggest challenge, for example, Aston Martin with Honda, because there’s only one of them, and Audi. There’s only one of them. At least Red Bull has the two teams with the power unit, and Mercedes will eventually have four teams charging round, so their learning capacity, their rate of gain will be higher, I believe. So that bodes very well for those four teams eventually.”
Upcoming Tests and Season Start
Two additional pre-season tests await in February at the Bahrain International Circuit, paving the way for the season opener, the Australian Grand Prix on March 8.
