Mercedes star George Russell is adamant that Red Bull holds the best energy deployment on the Formula 1 grid, with pre-season testing for the 2026 campaign now finished.
This year will introduce widespread regulation changes, and one of the alterations concerns the power unit, which holds more electrical energy, meaning battery harvesting will play a key role in grands prix.
It may include drivers downshifting on straights, which has obviously divided opinion: Max Verstappen claimed it’s like “Formula E on steroids”, whereas Lando Norris reckons it’s “a lot of fun”.
Verstappen’s comments came despite rivals praising Red Bull’s engine – the first it has built in-house – with Toto Wolff previously stating that it’s “the benchmark” which Mercedes “could not match”.
Although those comments may have been politically motivated amid the compression ratio drama, Russell echoed his bosses’ thoughts, saying: “Their deployment definitely still looks the best on the grid, which is kudos to them and I think was a bit of a surprise to everybody.
“So I think let's see come Melbourne [season opener in March] how things shake up. I think the Mercedes-powered teams have made a lot of improvements since day one of Bahrain last week, so that gap has closed drastically.
“But we're obviously day six of Bahrain testing now, whereas in Melbourne you've got three hours of practice – and that's the main point of the concern.”
George Russell, Mercedes
The obvious caveat is that this was pre-season testing, meaning not a lot can be read into it. That’s also because Bahrain, with its many straights, holds different track characteristics to the likes of Jeddah and Albert Park, meaning the ability to harvest energy will change round to round.
“At certain tracks we're going to be much more harvest-limited than we are here,” said McLaren driver Oscar Piastri on Friday in Bahrain. “Here, depending on where you set your optimality, you don't have to do much lift-and-coast, whereas in Melbourne I think if you didn't want to do any, you'd be running out of energy very, very quickly.
“It just depends on the layout of the circuit. Jeddah is another one, places where you have a few straights linked together by fast corners where it's very difficult to harvest, that's where the most kind of abnormality is going to come.
“So yeah, there's going to be some big differences. But in saying that, again, you can change things around a lot. We've seen people here in Turn 12, you can definitely make a corner if you want to and it's a lot harder than it was last year. But, at the moment, it's kind of all set before you get in the car. You can change it on the fly.
“But, it's a bit different because you're not just managing on the throttle, let's say. So Melbourne is going to look quite different, I think, and will be a challenge for us all, I'm sure.”
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