Max Verstappen wasn’t biting.
On the opening day of 2026 pre-season testing in Bahrain, Toto Wolff lobbed a familiar grenade across the pitlane: Red Bull, he said, had started the new rules era as the “benchmark”, with its freshly-minted Red Bull Powertrains Ford unit apparently able to deploy more energy on the straights — a gain Wolff framed as being worth “a second a lap”.
Verstappen’s response had the tone of someone who’s heard this song a few too many times, from too many directions.
“Let’s look back at the last 10 years of winter testing,” he said when asked about Wolff’s assessment. “I don’t think you can say who is the World Champion on day one, especially with a new rule set like this. For me personally, it’s more just like diversion tactics.”
It’s the kind of line that lands because it fits the moment. Not just because it’s early February and everyone’s either sandbagging or accusing someone else of it — but because 2026 has arrived with the sort of technical and political tension that makes any public compliment sound like a trap.
The pre-season conversation has been dominated by engines, and not in the usual vague “numbers look good” way. The paddock has been buzzing over an alleged Mercedes solution tied to the new lower compression ratio of 16.0, measured at ambient temperature, but with suggestions it could effectively run a higher ratio at track temperature. Rivals have pushed back hard, and while Red Bull was mentioned in off-season reporting around the same topic, it has since aligned with those advocating that compression ratios should be tested at hot temperatures.
That context matters, because Wolff’s “benchmark” label doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When the sport is arguing over measurement conditions and interpretation as homologation approaches, praising your main rival’s straight-line deployment starts to look less like honesty and more like narrative management.
Verstappen didn’t exactly hide that he sees it that way.
“But that’s okay,” he added. “I focus on what we’re doing here with the team, because honestly, for us, there’s still so much to learn, these new rules that is so complex. We just want to do our laps and just go from there.”
If Wolff was trying to frame Red Bull as the standard-setter, the irony is that Red Bull’s own story is already big enough without any help from Mercedes. The Milton Keynes operation has turned up in Bahrain not only with a new chassis — the RB22 — but with its first in-house engine programme finally at the pointy end of the grid. Red Bull Powertrains Ford was built from scratch, and there was always an expectation that the first season might involve some stumbles, or at least a period of finding its feet.
So far, the early signs have been the opposite: reliable and competitive. Verstappen pointed to the team’s opening workload as a quiet but significant positive, referencing the 136 laps logged the previous day.
“That’s exactly what we want to do,” he said. “But it’s not a given.”
He also made a point of grounding the optimism in reality — and in the peculiar theatre of testing.
“You never know, right?” Verstappen said when asked if he expected such a strong start from the Red Bull Ford engine, and whether it can become a race-winning package this season. He referenced having visited the factory and seeing the resources and personnel in place, but stopped well short of any sweeping conclusion.
“If it’s going to be enough to win, I don’t know. You don’t have a clue at the moment,” he said. “Also, what you see here now in testing, you won’t see in Melbourne for many cars, many engines as well. And it’s normal… that other people are hiding and trying to probably make us look really good.”
That last line is classic paddock literacy: the idea that rivals are content to let Red Bull take the early headlines, because it suits them. Either it applies pressure to the reigning champions, or it nudges the conversation toward regulation interpretation, or it simply lets everyone else keep their own cards tucked away a little longer.
Red Bull, for its part, is projecting the sort of calm that usually comes from a team that trusts its process, even while acknowledging that the new regulations are “so complex” there’s “a massive room for improvement”. Verstappen’s message was essentially: yes, it’s been a “very nice” start, but don’t confuse that with certainty.
And that’s where Wolff’s “benchmark” talk meets Verstappen’s “diversion tactics” jab. In February, nobody gives anything away for free. If a rival is saying you’ve found a second a lap, the safest assumption is that they’re trying to make you wear it — either in expectation, scrutiny, or both.
What’s striking, though, is that even with Red Bull’s early encouragement — the mileage, the reliability, the flashes of competitiveness — Verstappen still sounds like someone bracing himself for a season defined by complexity, not comfort. He’s already been critical of the 2026 direction elsewhere, and there’s little in his comments here that suggests a driver enjoying a clean-sheet era. This is a driver getting the work done, eyes open, and refusing to play along with anyone else’s storylines.
For now, testing has only confirmed one thing with any real clarity: the games have started early in 2026 — and Verstappen isn’t volunteering to be a pawn in them.
