Why McLaren was impressed with Red Bull during pre-season shakedown

Zak Brown singled out Red Bull’s new engine as one of two things that impressed him during the Barcelona shakedown.

The other was the general reliability from the ten teams that participated, given that it was the first outing for the new cars and the power units.

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Last month ten of the 11 Formula 1 teams, Williams excluded, took to the Circuit de Catalunya for a behind-closed-doors shakedown that ran for five days, with the teams permitted to test on any three of the five.

Mercedes and Ferrari emerged as the teams to beat, at least unofficially, with Mercedes completing the most laps at 500 while Ferrari set the pace as Lewis Hamilton’s 1:16.348 edging George Russell’s time by a tenth.

As for McLaren, it finished third fastest with reigning World Champion Lando Norris a quarter of a second off the pace and completed 291 laps.

But while Red Bull didn’t feature inside the top five for either laps or time, McLaren CEO Brown says he was impressed with the team’s performance as this is the first year that Red Bull, and its sister team Racing Bulls, are running an engine designed by Red Bull Powertrains in conjunction with Ford.

“I would say the Red Bull engine, the Ford engine, seem very, very strong, so hats off to them,” Brown told PlanetF1.com and other media.

“Not only did it seem to be very quick, but also very reliable.”

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According to unofficial numbers, the Red Bull Powertrain engine covered 622 laps with two teams running it. The Mercedes power unit completed 1136 laps across three teams, and Ferrari, 922, with three teams using the power unit.

Brown was generally impressed with the reliability shown by the engines and the teams as Mercedes alone racked up 500 laps and Ferrari 442.

Given that the teams were not only running cars designed under a new regulatory set but also the new power units, Brown applauded the teams.

But again, he reiterated, Red Bull’s engine stood out for him.

“I would say the reliability in general seemed to be very strong for very sophisticated, new, kind of immature regulations that will develop over time,” he said.

“I think the amount of running everyone got in was impressive.

“So I think those are the things that stood out: the Ford engine and the general reliability on what are very sophisticated new rules.”

Red Bull Powertrains is reportedly one of two engine manufacturers, the other being Mercedes, who found a loophole in the engine regulations that relates to compression ratio.

This season that’s been set at 16:1 when measured in “ambient” conditions. But according to reports, the Red Bull-Ford PU as well as the Mercedes HPP unit can increase that ratio to 18:1 when running.

The teams return to action on Wednesday in Bahrain for the start of the first official three-day pre-season test.

The new F1 season begins 6 March with FP1 for the Australian Grand Prix.

Additional reporting by Oliver Harden

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