Red Bull F1 appears to have successfully built a power unit

It was a little awkward to talk about, but Red Bull — dominant force in more than one F! regulatory era as an engine customer — was at risk of catastrophic setback if its incredibly bold plan of becoming a works team (with Ford’s help) did not go smoothly. Well, it looks like it did.

Red Bull — which has to field four cars, remember — ran like a clock in the Barcelona test, and Isack Hadjar did the fastest lap of the first day. He did later wreck the car, and the team may have lost some running from that, but I don’t think there’s any need to catastrophize. Verstappen also red-flagged a session in testing by getting into the gravel. This suggests Red Bull had everything it needed to know about basic reliability and were willing to start pushing hard.