McLaren and Mercedes step up work to understand Red Bull advantage
McLaren is escalating efforts with Formula 1 engine partner Mercedes to work out how best to quickly close down Red Bull's current deployment advantage.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has singled out Red Bull as the benchmark right now based on its impressive performances in this week's Bahrain test so far.
He even suggested its power unit was delivering a one-second per lap advantage on the straights – something that has been backed up by analysis of data traces of long run form.
Wolff's view is supported by what others have seen too, with McLaren's world champion Lando Norris in no doubt about the current form book.
He called Red Bull "a good step ahead of us" – as he made clear that having more energy on tap to boost straightline speed was a very good thing to have.
"With a deployment advantage, it's a beautiful bit of lap time to have in your pocket," he said.
Seeking improvements
The evidence of this week's Bahrain test has spurred world champion squad McLaren to increase efforts with Mercedes to work out why Red Bull is better on deployment – and what it needs to do to close down the gap.
McLaren technical director of engineering Neil Houldey had nothing but praise for the job that Red Bull had done with its power unit, as he explained that efforts were now going on with Mercedes to find gains.
"To start from scratch and get to the position they've put themselves in is amazing," he said.
"I know that Mercedes HPP have worked incredibly hard to get the PU that we've got, and I've no doubt that we'll get the deployment that we need to be competitive this year.
"At the moment, we're working with them just to see how we can up that, because there are opportunities that we've got to move deployment around, and to put ourselves in a position that's closer to the Red Bull."
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Houldey felt that improvements could be found from a better understanding of both harvesting and deploying energy available, as well as trying to increase the amount of battery power available over each lap.
But he also suggested that having the best power unit in F1 was not necessarily solely down to having a deployment advantage.
Houldey added: "You see some teams who are able to deploy more, and you also see teams - whether they're from the same PU manufacturer or different PU manufacturers - deploying at different times in the lap.
"At the moment, it looks like there's a little step there [to Red Bull]. But I think the PU that we have is advantageous in other areas. So it works both ways."
Norris reckoned that while some of the gap between teams could be closed through changes made to what he and his team do on track, there was a reliance on Mercedes to find more too.
But delivering such gains requires Mercedes to get a better understanding of what Red Bull is doing differently to have so much more power available.
"There might be some little things I can do better, but that's certainly not going to make the difference to what they're doing," said Norris.
"They have a very good power unit, by the looks of things. They deploy, and have a lot of efficiency. We need to understand how they have that.
"There's some things on the McLaren side we can do a little bit. But also from a McLaren and HPP side, and Mercedes, I think that they know there's certainly areas we need to improve."
Diversion tactics?
But Max Verstappen senses some political tactics in play in all the talk of a Red Bull engine advantage.
He argued that the first days of winter testing rarely tell you who will be world champion, as he felt rivals were simply trying to shift attention away from themselves.
"Let's look back at the last 10 years of winter testing, I don't think you can say who is the world champion on day one – and especially with a new rule set like this," he said. "For me personally it's more like diversion tactics.
"What you see here now in testing, you won't see in Melbourne for many cars, and many engines as well.
"It's normal of course that other people are hiding and trying to probably make us look really good.
"At the same time, we don't care. We just focus on ourselves, and just try to do the best we can."
But in a potential warning to rivals who are already scratching their heads over where Red Bull's advantage is coming from, Verstappen reckoned there were still opportunities for his team to do better.
Asked by The Race about the prospects of starting the season with a victory, he said: "If it's going to be enough to win I don't know.
"I'm happy of course with how everything started, but there's still such a massive room for improvement at the same time as well because of how complicated everything is."