Red Bull in no mood for sandbagging as Helmut Marko calls Thursday's pre-season testing the 'best ever'

On the first day of the 2023 F1 pre-season testing, Max Verstappen drove for Red Bull for the entire day. After the first day came to an end, Helmut Marko was quite pleased with the performance of the car and how the team operated.

While every other team had both drivers take one session each, the reigning world champion drove throughout the day, helping the team get as much data as they wanted.

Speaking after the first day of the 2023 F1 pre-season testing, Helmut Marko claimed it was the best testing day for Red Bull, saying:

"I think this is Red Bull Racing's best ever test day. We are in a much better position than a year ago. So an excellent starting point."

Max Verstappen ended the day with a whopping 157 laps under his belt and the fastest lap of 1:32:837. Later in the day, Fernando Alonso was able to take his Aston Martin up the ranks and finish second in the timing sheet, just 0.029 seconds slower than the Red Bull driver.

Considering it was only the first day of pre-season testing, the lap times set by Verstappen were quite impressive. In comparison, during the last qualifying session for the 2022 F1 Bahrain GP, Charles Leclerc set the fastest time of 1.30.558. This proves that the Austrian-British is in no mood to sandbag their car and are determined to show their full power right from the get-go.

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Red Bull head of engineering on the team's first day at 2023 Bahrain pre-season test

Gianpiero Lambiase, Head of Race Engineering at Red Bull, spoke about how smoothly the first day of the 2023 F1 pre-season testing went for the team. The team faced no major reliability issues and were able to concentrate on several aerodynamic and mechanical aspects of the car.

Lambiase also praised the team's hard work in making such a stable car for the season, saying:

"Today was a promising start to the 2023 season as we were able to complete the planned program without major reliability concerns. Everyone's hard work over the winter has really paid off as the car hit the ground running in terms of balance, and we were able to concentrate on testing various broader aerodynamic and mechanical configurations to better understand the new platform as well as the subtlety modified tire construction."

In the 2023 F1 season, Pirelli also introduced a brand new tire compound, which every team, including Red Bull, tried for the first time. Since their car was extremely reliable during the first day of testing, they were able to completely focus on the slightly modified tires as well.

There will now be six dry-weather tire compounds instead of five, giving teams more options during race weekends.