Formula flame hot-up ahead of new season

Red Bull’s advantage at the front of the Formula 1 field is “pretty scary,” says Mercedes driver George Russell.

The Briton said that the performance shown by Red Bull this week in the first of two pre-season tests at Bahrain had been a “reality check” for their rivals.

“They’re not just a small step ahead,” the Briton said. “You’re talking in the order of half a second to a second in deployment over the course of a lap.

“It’s pretty scary to see that difference. And Red Bull have always delivered a very good car over the past 15 years, even when they didn’t have a great engine. So, yeah, this test has been really eye-opening for a lot of us.”

F1 is introducing its biggest rule change in history this season, with the engines, chassis, tyres and fuel all to a new specification. Energy management has become a much more central part of the sport as a consequence of engines that have about half their total power output produced by the electrical part of the engine, and a limited battery size.

Rivals say GPS traces of the Red Bull power-unit in Bahrain this week have shown that it can keep deploying its electrical energy for longer than any rival.

This is all the more impressive because Red Bull have set up their own engine company from scratch for the new rules, and gone into partnership with Ford.

Russell said he and his team had noticed Red Bull’s strength from the time they started running at the ‘shakedown’ test in Spain last month.

He said: “The truth is, Red Bull in Barcelona day one hit the ground running and were well ahead of all of their competitors - ourselves, Ferrari and the others.