Red Bull – 329 laps
Laurent Mekies – Team Principal
“For the sport as a whole, the three sessions across Barcelona and Bahrain have been fascinating from so many different perspectives – the PU technology, the fuel, the aero, different tyre sizes and, as always at the heart of it all, the drivers leading the narrative as to what these cars are like on track. I believe interest in F1 by the time we get to Melbourne will be off the charts.
"For our part, those first sessions in Barcelona were a source of relief and pride, especially in terms of what we have managed to achieve so far with the very first Red Bull Ford Powertrains PU. After two weeks of testing in Bahrain, we should be proud of what we’ve achieved up against the established power unit manufacturers, the mileage we’ve completed across the nine days of shakedowns and testing is respectable. As I’ve said before, this is truly remarkable and a testament to all the hours of hard work put in by those back in the factory.
"Performance? Even with all our technology and simulation tools, everyone will only start to get a partial idea of the pecking order down the pit lane after Saturday’s qualifying session in Albert Park.
"Next, we go racing. We know we have a lot of very hard work ahead of us to be at the level we want to be. That’s our next mountain to climb, and all of us will be climbing it together as one Team."
Max Verstappen
“This week has been a good start. For my runs in the car, we’ve basically completed the full programme, so that was good as we have plenty of data to go over and analyse. Going into Bahrain testing, I think we prepared as well as we could and the Team have done a great job to get to where we are. I think it is quite obvious, of course, that there is still quite a bit of work to do for us to be faster so this is something we will be working on. Let’s see what we get in Melbourne: it will be great to be back racing but we still have to work hard.”
Isack Hadjar
“We made the most of the last day of testing. We trialled a lot of set up changes, they all made sense, so I feel good with the direction we took. The pace on long runs and high fuel was also good. When I started in F1, the car was already more or less fully developed. I’ve enjoyed giving more inputs and steering the Team in the right direction. I’m very happy with the learnings from this week and I'm excited to go racing in Melbourne”.
