Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Red Bull can cope with missing first 2016 test

Red Bull can cope with missing the first test of the 2016 F1 season if a late power unit deal comes together.

The team's future in the sport is uncertain as team owner Dietrich Mateschitz threatens to quit if he is unable to secure a competitive power unit. With Mercedes unwilling to supply Red Bull and Ferrari only offering older power units, a solution has yet to be reached.

Chief engineer Paul Monaghan admits the team is already behind as a result of not having a power unit deal in place, but he says Red Bull has the ability to recover even if it was to miss out on the opening test of next season.

"It’s getting a little bit late," Monaghan said. "At the moment it will be a squeeze but we’ll do it. I guess if you’re… OK, we can go to the first test and it can be a washout for three or four days, so it’s wrong to say that anybody that runs the first test will automatically have a benefit on us. Yeah, they might, but we could cope – so however the land lies, we’ll deal with it."

The first test of 2016 is provisionally scheduled to take place from February 22-25 at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.