Formula 1 testing: Red Bull’s advantage is ‘pretty scary’, says George Russell

The second day of testing on Thursday saw two of last year’s title contenders, Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, disagree over whether the new cars are fun to drive.

Russell said the 2026 cars were “better to drive” in terms of handling and ride than last year, but added that “the engines are very complex.”

“These two tracks, Barcelona and Bahrain, are arguably the easiest tracks for the engines,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything too early before we get to the likes of Melbourne or Jeddah, but it will be more challenging for the engines and power once we get there.”

But he expanded on a point Verstappen made about new engines requiring unusual driving styles.

This involves using much lower gears in turns than usual, just to ensure the engine is revving high so the systems can recover as much energy as possible.

“For example, here in Bahrain, the first corners were usually a third gear corner in the previous generation (of the car). Now, we have to use first gear to keep the engine, and the engine revs are very high to keep the turbo spinning,” Russell said.

“That’s probably the one thing that’s really annoying and not intuitive.

“Imagine when you’re driving to the supermarket in your car and you get to the roundabout and you put it in third gear to drive around the roundabout, but suddenly the person next to you says, ‘Put it in first gear.’

“It’s all like ‘Wwaahh’, accelerating. You can’t go around the roundabout to the supermarket at full speed if you’re driving at a reasonable speed. It’s the same thing.

“The car and the engine are designed to go around these corners in third gear, but because of the turbos and boost and all that, you have to keep the revs really high, which means you have to use first gear.

“So, the car isn’t really designed to do that, but we’re working around that.”

He added that due to the critical nature of energy levels in lap times, it was not always the case that driving around the corner in the quickest way possible – which is usually an essential part of a race driver’s job – would result in the best lap time.

“In the past, if you turned the corner faster or tried something different and it worked, you knew that was a positive and you should move forward with it,” Russell said.

“Here, you almost need to wait a full turn to actually learn, ‘What I did on the first turn, did that cost me energy or not?’