Sainz: Red Bull Ford ‘a clear step ahead’ in early 2026 engine race

In the desert heat of Bahrain testing – where lap times whisper clues rather than shout truths – Williams charger Carlos Sainz joined a growing chorus of voices pointing toward one emerging force: the Red Bull Ford power unit.

The intrigue began on Wednesday when Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff openly praised Red Bull’s early showing, highlighting its car’s exceptional electric energy deployment and calling the unit “the benchmark at the moment”.

Hours later, Sainz, a Mercedes-powered driver himself, effectively echoed the sentiment from inside the cockpit – a perspective grounded not in rumor, but in the silent language of GPS traces and straight-line surges.

GPS Clues and Early Signals

Winter testing is Formula 1’s favorite guessing game, a blend of genuine innovation and deliberate misdirection. Yet some patterns are too striking to ignore. On extended runs, Red Bull’s cars appeared to regenerate and redeploy electric energy with startling efficiency as Wolff noted, allowing sustained bursts of speed lap after lap.

It was enough to catch the eye of competitors scrolling through telemetry screens late into the evening.

Sainz did exactly that —-and what he saw left little room for indifference.

"It's still extremely early days, but if I would have to judge by the GPS data of yesterday, right now it is true that whatever Red Bull Ford Powertrains were doing yesterday was a clear step ahead of anyone else," he said. "Not only a small step, but a clear step and it was mighty impressive.

"If they manage to turn up to race one with a completely new set of regulations, with a completely new engine, new people, and turn up to be the fastest and most reliable engine, you will have to take your hat off to them and say what they've come up with, because at least what they were showing yesterday was very impressive."

For a driver representing a Mercedes customer team, such candid praise carries weight. It suggests that beneath the usual testing smoke screens, Red Bull Ford may have unlocked an early advantage in the new hybrid era.

The 2026 Balancing Act

The 2026 regulations are reshaping the sport’s technical soul. Electric output has surged, tripling compared to the previous generation and now accounting for up to half of total power.

Yet battery capacity has not grown alongside it, creating a paradox: more power available, but the same energy reservoir to draw from. Drivers can drain their batteries multiple times per lap if they are careless – or if their systems are not perfectly tuned.

This is where finesse replaces brute force. In Bahrain, observers noticed drivers short-shifting or dipping into lower gears through slow corners, coaxing every possible watt back into their batteries. Technique, software learning, and mechanical harmony now intertwine more tightly than ever.

Sainz believes success will belong to those who merge these elements into a single, seamless philosophy rather than treating them as separate challenges.

"The key to these regulations is not going to be separating both, but integrating both of them together," the Spaniard explained. "From what I could see yesterday, it seems like Red Bull has done exactly that, without having to give the driver a compromise.

• Read also: Wolff warns: Mercedes ‘screwed’ if FIA changes engine rules

"When the car is telling you to downshift a certain way, you just do what the car is asking you to do. That's why all drivers, after we will end up doing maybe 300, 400 laps in Bahrain, we try to sort every kind of technique to try and help the driveability and the performance of the car.

"That's why I'm insisting that the integration of power unit versus gearbox versus driver preferences, it all has to be a closed circle. The moment one of the two or three things are not exactly how you want is where you start facing issues, so everyone's going to need to adapt and find the right way."

In other words, the future of Formula 1 may hinge less on who builds the most powerful engine and more on who orchestrates the most complete symphony between machine and human.

For now, Sainz’s assessment – aligned with Wolff’s earlier praise – suggests Red Bull Ford may already be playing in tune. The rest of the grid is still adjusting their instruments.

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