George Russell issues huge Red Bull F1 engine warning: ‘They’ve delivered’

Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russell has praised Red Bull’s new power unit, labelling it “very impressive” following the Barcelona pre-season test last month.

The 2026 Red Bull, and the sister Racing Bulls team, are running in-house-built Red Bull Powertrain units that have had input from Ford.

The new engine enjoyed a strong start to the season during last month’s opening winter test at Barcelona, showing good performance and reliability across its running.

This caught the eye of Mercedes’ George Russell.

“Well, obviously, we’ve only driven the car for three days,” Russell said on Monday during a Mercedes media event.

“But, quoting Toto [Wolff], it doesn’t look like a turd, which is a bonus. And, to be honest, in the early days like this, you know when it could be a really bad car, and you can sort of highlight those negatives early on.

“We don’t believe it is. But is it a car to produce a world championship? It’s way too early to say.

“But we’ve been quite surprised by what we’ve seen from some our rivals, especially on the Red Bull power unit side.

“That looks very impressive, especially given they’re a new outfit.

“It’s very reliable as well, so kudos to them. We’ve had a very reliable test; we’ll have to wait and see if the car lives up to expectations.”

He added: “There was some talk about the Red Bull power unit not being up to standard year one.

“From what we’ve seen so far, they’ve definitely delivered. Ferrari power unit looks reliable.

“They did lots of laps over the course of the test. Haas did a lot of laps as well with the Ferrari engine.

“The truth is, there could be a good fight on our hands, but we’re satisfied with what we have so far.”

Mercedes keeping expectations in check after 2022 disappointment

Mercedes had a strong first test at Barcelona, too, though Russell was keen to stress caution after the struggles the team faced in 2022 during the last major rules reset.

“Definitely, we wanted to reel in expectations, because as confident as we were that there wasn’t going to be any crazy unknowns or unforeseen things happening with the car, like we saw with porpoising, we still didn’t know,” he explained.

“Nobody expected porpoising in 2022. So, you couldn’t discount everything right now.

“But that’s why I think we left Barcelona with positive feelings, because the car reacted as we anticipated.

“The numbers we’re seeing from the aero on the car match what we’re seeing on the simulator.

“How the car is handling is matching how it feels on the simulator. This is not something we’ve experienced as a team since 2021.

“We’re ticking the boxes of everything we want to tick, but we can’t discount our rivals.”