Red Bull deliver 'fair bit faster' warning in fight with F1 rivals

Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has predicted that Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren are "a fair bit faster" than the Milton Keynes-based squad heading into the F1 season opener.

Speaking during pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the 48-year-old continued to dampen expectations over how well the RB22 will fare once racing gets underway in Melbourne.

It was the "surprise" package during the first three-day test in Sakhir, which caused Mercedes — the early favourite — to claim that the six-time constructors' champions were leading the charge.

Red Bull responded in kind, and Mekies, who missed the first test, doubled down on that during the second event.

"We see Mercedes being the fastest team right now," he told media, including RacingNews365, in the team principals' press conference on the final day of running.

"As Alan [Permane, Racing Bulls team principal] said, it's a bit of a guessing game. I was questioning the guessing game of my colleagues; I'm not going to the game myself.

"But we [Red Bull] think Mercedes, Ferrari [and] McLaren, the three of them, are probably a fair bit faster than us right now."

At the hands of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, the RB22 had a slightly more unreliable and subdued second test, but rival teams argued it has merely turned down the wick of the new Red Bull-Ford power unit.

Nonetheless, Mekies insisted his squad did not sit alongside its usual cohort — even if he could not say what the deficit was.

"Telling you by what amount or in which order is probably too difficult, but that would be my guess right now," the Frenchman added.

"But the guess will change when we all evolve our cars. We'll all start to optimise what we have, and things will move again.

"I will say, we think these three [Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren] are a fair bit ahead of everyone else."