Red Bull and Ford handed crucial assessment: 'It can't be underestimated'

Red Bull and Ford have been handed high praise for the delivery of a power unit which had raised doubts prior to this week's first pre-season F1 test in Barcelona.

Red Bull has never shied away from the fact that building its own power unit for the first time, going up against the might of Ferrari and Mercedes and their renowned history in the field, was always going to be an uphill task.

Over the opening three days of the private test at the Circuit de Catalunya, though, Red Bull and Racing Bulls delivered a combined 393 laps, with no reliability issues. Liam Lawson added a further 64 before lunch on Thursday.

Racing Bulls chief technical officer Tim Goss claims the job conducted by Red Bull Powertrains, in tandem with assistance from Ford has been "really, really impressive".

Goss added: "To come as a complete newcomer to Formula 1 and on your very first day, to then get nearly 200 laps under your belt, it's easy to take this level of reliability for granted, but it can't be underestimated what they've achieved.

"Drivability is really good. To be honest, the drivability is fantastic."

Appreciating the difficulties of the new PU, which is run via a 50-50 split of combustion and electrical power, Goss said: "The difficulty that we, and probably all the other teams are coming to grips with is just how the energy management changes a little bit from lap to lap, from corner to corner.

"We're trying to wonder, to understand how best to tune all of that, and for the drivers, just to get used to it."

Racing Bulls 'up for the fight'

Although Racing Bulls has been off the pace so far, lap times this week are irrelevant.

As far as Goss is concerned, for his team, it is simply a case of gaining knowledge and experience of the new system and car, and incrementally building up performance.

"We're really excited," he said. "It's a new phase. We've spent all this time creating the car, and now we're actually getting to run it and understand it in real life.

"It is just so exciting to have so much that's changed, and so much to play with, and just so much to look forward to, in terms of creativity. All the engineers are thrilled to bits.

"We're getting on to this next phase, which is to build more and more performance, and everyone's up for the fight, basically. It's going to be fantastic."