Red Bull-Ford engine "the benchmark" in F1 Bahrain test, rivals claim

Mercedes Formula 1 boss shrugs off the early hype around his team and suggests Red Bull Ford has the stronger 2026 power unit

Mercedes Formula 1 chief Toto Wolff believes new power unit manufacturer Red Bull Ford has come out of the gates with the best engine at Bahrain testing.

During a spell in which Honda decided to withdraw from F1, a decision it later reversed to partner with Aston Martin, former CEO Christian Horner pushed ahead with the decision for Red Bull to start producing in-house power units. It then signed Ford as a works partner for the rechristened Red Bull Ford Powertrains operation on its Milton Keynes campus.

While Red Bull poached numerous staff from the other engine manufacturers, including Mercedes, initial expectations were that Red Bull would face an uphill battle for its first-ever power units to be competitive from the dawn of the 2026 campaign.

But the DM01, named after Red Bull's late chairman Dietrich Mateschitz, surprised friend and foe alike by being reliable out of the box at Barcelona's shakedown, and both its V6 engine and hybrid deployment showed promising signs of performance.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

According to Wolff, whose Mercedes team had been bombarded as the pre-season favourite after the shakedown, Red Bull has found another step on the first morning of Bahrain testing to extract performance from the all-important energy deployment.

"Well, I was hoping that they were worse than they are, because they have done a very good job," Wolff said about Red Bull after Max Verstappen led the morning session on Wednesday. "The car, the power unit are the benchmark at the moment I would say. And then obviously you have Max in the car, that combination is strong."

When asked to explain why he felt Red Bull's engine, which also graces the Racing Bulls sister car, was the benchmark, he replied: "Look at the energy deployment today. They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else. I mean, over consecutive laps.

"On a single lap we have seen it before, but now we have seen it on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straightline deployment. I would say that as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always with a caveat, they have set the benchmark today."

Wolff's surprising admission came as the saga over Mercedes' compression ratio trick rumbles on, with rival teams still trying to force through a rule change before Australia that could leave the Silver Arrows and its customer teams on the back foot.

But Wolff claims the hype around his power units has been overblown. "I think everybody was a little bit too excited about the performance of the Mercedes engine-powered teams,' he added. "And I think that our colleagues from the other brands have been carried away a little bit, that this could be embarrassing, which I don't think it is at all."