Carlos Sainz backs Toto Wolff’s fears about Red Bull-Ford F1 engine

Carlos Sainz has backed Toto Wolff in claiming that Red Bull’s new F1 power unit is the “clear” benchmark ahead of the 2026 season.

Red Bull impressed their rivals by making a statement on the opening day of the first pre-season test in Bahrain, with Max Verstappen completing the most mileage of a single driver and topping the timesheet for much of Wednesday.

The performance of the brand-new Red Bull, and their first in-house engine, caught attention in the F1 paddock and led to some pretty bold claims from the Mercedes camp.

But Sainz, who drives a Mercedes-powered Williams, insists GPS data suggests that Red Bull appears to be a “clear step ahead” of the rest.

"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," Sainz 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.”

What has Toto Wolff claimed?

Wolff suggested Red Bull’s Ford engine was the “benchmark” for 2026 after the opening day of official F1 pre-season testing.

The Mercedes boss fears the Silver Arrows are well behind Red Bull when it comes to energy deployment, and even went as far as to claim the German manufacturer is losing one second per lap on the straights to their rival.

“They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else,” Wolff said in Bahrain on Wednesday. “I mean, I'm speaking a second per lap, over consecutive laps.”

“On a single lap we have seen it before - but now we have seen it on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straight line deployment,” he added.

“I would say that, as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always with the caveat of that, they've set the benchmark.”

This comes amid the backdrop of a row over F1’s compression ratio controversy, which could see a rule change imposed ahead of the start of the new season.

Ferrari, Honda, Audi and Red Bull are pushing for a change which would hurt the Mercedes-powered teams the most.