No cause for alarm over Red Bull’s impressive F1 test pace

Red Bull emerged from F1’s pre-season test at Sakhir widely regarded as the team to beat, with the RB19 appearing to be very reliable and quick on both short and long runs. 

But while the pace of the Red Bull appeared to be bad news for Ferrari, which is targeting a fight for world championship glory this year, Vasseur seems far from alarmed about what he has seen in running so far. 

PLUS: How the F1 2023 competitive order is shaping up after Bahrain testing

He is adamant that Ferrari’s focus on the test was not on chasing headline times, as it instead concentrated much of its time on set-up evaluation. 

Furthermore, Vasseur believes testing times can be especially deceptive in Bahrain as the later running of the race weekend compared to testing makes the competitive order likely very different when competition gets underway. 

“Overall, I think that we can be happy with the test that we did,” Vasseur told selected media, including Autosport, about his summary of the test. 

“I think overall the car looks okay performance wise, but we don’t know about the level of fuel of the others. 

“The most important was to scan every kind of setting on the car, because you know that the feature of today [at the test] is completely different to the picture of next week.  

“I don’t remember who did the fastest lap time last year in Bahrain, but he was not on pole position for the race. And that was the same two years ago.” 

Asked if the Red Bull pace had worried Ferrari, Vasseur said: “What is true is that on one lap pace, you are not able to judge because you don’t know if they are running with 20/30/50 kilos, and they don’t know if we are at 20/30/50kg. It means that it’s very difficult to do any kind of comparison.  

“The only thing that you can judge is when you are doing a race simulation. Because you know that, if you don’t stop the car and you do 55 laps, it means that you started with 110kg. It’s the only one [where you know]. 

“On our side we did different attempts, with different levels of fuel. Some solutions were working, some other a bit less. We have to get the best from this and to do a proper analysis.  

“But again, the race next week, even between the start of the race and the end of the race, it will be a different story.  

“Bahrain, at the end of the race, the track [temperature] is very, very low in terms of track and the picture…