Verstappen believes Renault, McLaren no threat to Red Bull

Red Bull has been strong in pre-season testing so far, with Daniel Ricciardo topping the Barcelona times on Wednesday and Mercedes technical director James Allison singling out the team for praise.

But while the Milton Keynes-based outfit is not yet bullish enough to declare itself firmly a victory contender, Verstappen has made it clear that he is no longer worried about opposition from within the Renault-powered camp.

"You pay attention to everybody, but I don't think they will be our main rivals," the Dutchman told Motorsport.com about the potential threat from McLaren and Renault.

"And we don't want that to be the case as well, because that would mean we are not doing such a good job. We need to look [at the teams] ahead."

Verstappen said that there had been no dramas in testing and everything was progressing as expected.

"Yeah, quite good," he said. "Pretty relaxed. I do my own thing and we manage to do our laps.

"For sure this week is better than last week, in terms of temperatures and what you can learn from the car.

"I just do my thing and wait for Australia to come. I'm really looking forward to that now!"

Pushed on the possibility of a world championship challenge, Verstappen said: "I don't have an idea about this yet.

"I think we just need to wait for the beginning of the season and see how things are going in the first few races. After that you can really quickly say if you can fight for the title or not, of course."

Mercedes tyre factor

Verstappen's bullishness about the car is matched by Red Bull's motorsport advisor Helmut Marko, who thinks that the team's chassis is strong enough to fight with Mercedes.

And although he concedes engine modes may give his rivals a qualifying advantage, he thinks suggestions Mercedes could be suffering from rear tyre management issues is reason to believe things could swing back in his team's favour in the races.

When asked by Sky if he felt Red Bull could fight with the reigning champion, he said: "I would say from the chassis side, yes. But Mercedes in qualifying, there always comes from the engine an extra 2-3 tenths.

"If you compare our car to last year's car it is so much more sophisticated, and so far everything is working as we expected. Hopefully we can match them."

Pushed on whether Red Bull could be the team to beat on slow speed circuits, Marko added: "We won one race last year by our own. There was no problem with Mercedes when we beat [Lewis] Hamilton.

"What we have seen is that their rear tyres are overheating. It is depending on the overall package and we still have something to come, so we are positive."

Marko also felt that Red Bull held the advantage over Ferrari, despite Sebastian Vettel's record breaking lap of Barcelona on Thursday.

"Vettel just did a 1m17.6s but it is cooler today. We don't know the sort of load of fuel they have, but from a package overall, and let's say on this circuit, it looks like we are a little bit ahead."

Verstappen interview by Erwin Jaeggi