Toto Wolff claims Red Bull Formula 1 car, power unit are the benchmark

Red Bull's first-ever F1 power unit, the DM01 (named after the late Dietrich Mateschitz), showed impressive reliability out of the box as the team managed decent mileage in Barcelona's private shakedown, with their sister team, Racing Bulls, also racking up the miles with the same power unit.

Wolff's comments came after Max Verstappen amassed 136 laps on Day 1 of the preseason test in Bahrain while managing the second fastest time.

But it wasn't the lap time that caught Wolff's attention, as he explained: "I was hoping they [Red Bull] would be worse than they are. They have done a very good job.

"The car, the power unit, are the benchmark at the moment, I would say. Then obviously you have Max in the car; the combination is strong.

"Look at their energy deployment today. They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else. We are speaking a second per lap, over consecutive laps.

"On a single lap, we've seen it before, but now we have seen it on 10 consecutive laps with the same kind of straight-line deployment.

"I would say that as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always the caveat of that, they've set the benchmark today," Wolff concluded.

Williams Team Principal James Vowles joined his former boss in praising Red Bull and said: "I've been surprised, in a positive way for the sport, with Red Bull's power unit in terms of how competitive it is.

"But also, to build a power unit from scratch in your first year, delivered on track, have both of your teams running big kilometres, is mighty," the Briton added.