Red Bull 'like a brand-new team' after impressing rivals at F1 shakedown

Mercedes F1 star George Russell has already started with the 2026 mind games, claiming Red Bull look 'like a brand-new team' after a strong showing in testing.

With new regulations sweeping into the sport this year, fans are desperately trying to get clues as to which team have mastered those regulations, and how the competitive order might look at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in March.

And with a whopping 11 days-worth of testing taking place before the season, there is plenty of speculation that can breed among fans, taking note of every mini session.

During the first day of the Barcelona private shakedown which began earlier this week, Mercedes got out of the blocks well, with Russell managing to put in 95 laps for the Brackley outfit and Kimi Antonelli a further 59.

But it was Red Bull who topped the timesheets, with Isack Hadjar putting in a reported time of 1:18.159.

Mercedes have been rumoured for a while to be the team most likely to master the new regulations, but Red Bull have started a new era of power unit production, and are also looking strong, prompting Russell to deflect the attention away from his team during the first day of pre-season testing in Barcelona.

"For sure, we’re very pleased with the day, but I was pretty impressed with a number of other teams, to be honest," Russell told F1TV after the first day of testing.

"You see the Red Bull-powered teams’ brand new power unit and they’re like a brand-new team from a power unit side, and they had a really smooth day with two cars."

Red Bull's new era

Nevertheless, on day two of testing (Tuesday, January 27), both Verstappen and Hadjar experienced some teething issues with the RB22.

In the morning it was reported that Verstappen spun off onto the gravel and caused a red flag, although resumed the test and later completed extensive mileage.

At the close of the day, his team-mate Hadjar came to a stop at Turn 14 and a red flag was waved following a crash for the new Red Bull driver.

Having ditched their highly-successful Honda power unit partnership, Red Bull have started to make their own power units in partnership with Ford.

This new era is being overseen by Laurent Mekies too, a new team principal following the axing of Christian Horner during the 2025 season.

It's the first season since their inception into the sport in 2005 that Red Bull are starting the year without Horner at the helm, and it's also their first year without long-time motorsport advisor Helmut Marko, who retired at the end of last season.

It remains to be seen where both Red Bull and Mercedes are in the competitive order when we get to Melbourne, but the mind games have started already, and if they are both in a title fight, expect fireworks between Russell and four-time world champion Max Verstappen.

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