{"id":444694,"date":"2026-01-31T07:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444694\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T07:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T07:21:14","slug":"still-quite-a-bit-of-work-to-do-on-red-bull-f1-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444694\/","title":{"rendered":"“Still quite a bit of work to do” on Red Bull F1 engine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen<\/a> stated \u201cthere\u2019s still quite a bit of work to do\u201d on his new Red Bull Ford Powertrain after the first shakedown of the 2026 Formula 1 campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

F1 hosted a five-day private test in Barcelona this week, where all 11 teams were given a maximum of three days running ahead of this season\u2019s wholesale regulation change.<\/p>\n

Not only is there a new ruleset, however, but Red Bull – with Ford backing – will make its debut as a power unit supplier, 21 years after its team entered F1, in what is a huge undertaking.<\/p>\n

That is why it doesn\u2019t enter 2026 as favourites, despite boasting four-time champion and last year\u2019s runner-up Verstappen, who didn\u2019t really enjoy any proper running in Barcelona until Friday.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because Red Bull gave the whole Monday running to his new team-mate Isack Hadjar<\/a>, before the Dutchman jumped in for Tuesday morning but conditions were mixed, thus limiting any track time.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon Hadjar then crashed with the Austrian outfit not returning until the final day, where Verstappen completed a reported 118 laps to cap off a solid, but not perfect, week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStill work in progress, but I think we’ve hit the ground running quite well with those things,\u201d Verstappen told F1. \u201cIt’s still a very complicated formula for everyone, there’s still quite a bit of work to do, but that’s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\n

One team who does look very strong currently is Mercedes<\/a>, who completed the most laps this week with its teenage sophomore Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> even conducting a full race simulation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mercedes is favourite for this year\u2019s constructors\u2019 title, partly down to how it dominated the last engine change in 2014, while its star man George Russell<\/a> tops the odds for the drivers\u2019 crown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Silver Arrows had completed all of its running by Thursday and the confidence oozed through Russell, who also set the second fastest lap of the week behind Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think it was a very positive test,” said Russell. “We had lots of mileage on the car, which was the main focus of the test. The car’s feeling nice to drive, no major issues, no porpoising, which is pretty good news for all of us. It’ll save us a few years on the back. So, yeah, all in all, a decent few days.\u201d<\/p>\n

This marks a refreshing change for Mercedes, whose eight years of dominance ended with the introduction of ground-effect cars in 2022 as it has since gone without a title. Not a great deal should be read into this week\u2019s shakedown, considering it was mostly about clocking mileage than speed, and Russell certainly isn\u2019t getting ahead of himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the power unit side, there’s some impressive things from some of our competitors and that’s quite surprising, to be honest,\u201d the Briton added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, well done to them. But obviously, three days into a 24-race season, so you don’t want to judge too much into that. But I think a lot of people anticipated the new power unit suppliers to be sort of struggling and whatnot, and they’ve sort of had a good test as well. So, that’s good for them. But for us, time will tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen stated \u201cthere\u2019s still quite a bit of work to do\u201d on his new Red Bull Ford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[153611,49,48,148380,578,576,577,1885,183592,2190,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-444694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-barcelona-catalunya-pre-season-testing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-circuit-de-barcelona-catalunya","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-max-verstappen","16":"tag-max-verstappen-still-quite-a-bit-of-work-to-do-on-red-bull-f1-engine","17":"tag-red-bull-racing","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}