Jan.28 (GMM) Formula 1’s tightly guarded Barcelona ‘shakedown week’ delivered its first real incident on Tuesday when Isack Hadjar crashed the new Red Bull car in the fast final corner amid treacherous conditions.
With heavy rain forecast, most teams elected not to run at all, leaving only Red Bull and Ferrari on track. Rain arrived as early as 10:30am, severely limiting meaningful mileage.
Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies played down the crash, stressing the difficult conditions.
“The conditions were very tricky in the afternoon, and it was obviously very unfortunate that the day ended that way, but these things can always happen,” Mekies said.
“We will now do our best to repair the car.”
Mekies added that Max Verstappen also saw his program curtailed by the weather.
“He only got one lap before the rain, but that’s part of it,” he said.
Verstappen eventually logging 26 laps in damp conditions and suffered a minor spin. Despite the limited running, rivals have been struck by the apparent strength of Red Bull’s new in-house Red Bull-Ford power unit.
Red Bull Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson said the foundations of the program were strong.
“I have spent a great deal of my life designing racing engines,” Hodgkinson said. “I know what a good racing engine department looks like. I sensed an opportunity to build something very special here at Red Bull Powertrains, and Red Bull spared no expense in creating a first-class infrastructure.”
“I have complete confidence in our skilled workers and our engine plant,” he added. “We have all the ingredients to be successful here.”
Rivals have also noted Red Bull’s aggressive “size zero” sidepod concept.
Mercedes chose not to run in the wet, citing tyre management. “We don’t have too many sets of intermediate tyres from Pirelli,” Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin explained. “While it’s useful to get to know the car on a wet track, we don’t want to rush anything.”
Ferrari did complete running with both race drivers, with engineering chief Matteo Togninalli encouraged by early signs.
“Looking back at yesterday, our customer teams, to whom we supply engines, also accumulated a lot of mileage, and that’s a good sign,” he said.
Alpine, Audi and Cadillac also opted not to run, while McLaren postponed the planned debut of its black test livery due to the conditions.
One of the few visible technical novelties came via footage showing the new mirror-mounted hazard lights in operation. The lights flash simultaneously on both sides to warn following drivers of a slow or stopped car, with brighter and faster pulses than conventional road-car indicators.
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