George Russell is adamant that Red Bull holds an early advantage in Formula 1 2026, claiming its engine advantage is “scary” and that nobody “should be looking” at Mercedes as the team to beat.
Continuing the back-and-forth between the two teams at the start of the season, however, Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché believes the team are “not the benchmark” and lie fourth behind Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari.
Both Toto Wolff and Max Verstappen have had contrasting views about Mercedes and Red Bull’s pace at preseason testing in Bahrain, where neither team have yet showed their full hand, but both look competitive on track despite McLaren and Ferrari topping the opening two days.
Red Bull’s engine — produced by Red Bull for the first time in 2026 after the split with Honda — has been drawing praise in particular, with Russell claiming it has the most competitive package.
“I don’t think anybody should really be looking at us, you should be looking at the most competitive car on the grid which right now is the Red Bull,” Russell said.
“They’re not just a small step ahead, you’re talking in the order of half a second to a second in deployment over the course of a lap, so it’s pretty scary to see that difference.
“Red Bull have always delivered a very good car over the past 15 years even when they didn’t have a great engine, so this test has been really eye opening for a lot of us.”
Verstappen set the pace early on Wednesday in Bahrain, and Russell added: “The truth is Red Bull in Barcelona Day 1 hit the ground running and were well ahead of all of their competitors, so ourselves, Ferrari and the others.
“Day 1 here in Bahrain again, they sort of knocked it out of the park, so they are, at the moment they’re very much a team to beat and it’s quite straightforward when you have three days of testing in the same location to make those improvements.
“But when you get to Melbourne and you’ve got three hours of practice before qualifying, based on what we’ve seen in Barcelona and Bahrain, Red Bull are going to be ahead. So yeah, we’ve got work to do.”
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Speaking shortly before Russell, it’s fair to say Waché — on media duties for Red Bull with team boss Laurent Mekies absent — didn’t quite agree with the Briton’s sentiments.
“We are not the benchmark, for sure,” he said.
“We see clearly the top three teams, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren are in front of us, outside, from our analysis, and we are behind. But there is a work where we think we are. I find it difficult to say about those because the run plan of everybody, the level of fuel they run, the level of power they run is difficult to say, but it’s currently our analysis that it could be wrong.
“We don’t spend too much time on that. We try to focus on how to improve our work.”
