The Athletic

The Athletic

The race is on

And although McLaren top the first day of the Bahrain test, Red Bull and Max Verstappen were the star of the show.

But does it really have the edge? And even if it does,

was Toto Wolfe's claim it's got an advantage of one second per lap on the straits, hold water?

I'm Edgraw, and joining me to untangle this intriguing web is John Noble.

Well, John, finally, we have some running that we can watch. Don't have to go up a mountain to watch it.

And already the narrative has swung a little bit in a different direction towards Red Bull.

Yeah, it was interesting. We had a media session with Toto Wolf today at three o'clock.

We'd heard from James Vowell this morning and the fuel or the compression ratio topic had come up.

And we're expecting

toto session to be dominated by this indeed much of it was it was for 15 minutes

talked about the compression ratio the meetings and the fallout and what could

potentially happen etc and then towards the very end of the session he he was asked by somebody about Max Verstappen

and what he's made of Red Bull's form.

And he even answered that, you know, I wished they weren't as good as they had been.

But when you look at what's happening there, the benchmark.

And I did a double take and I thought, did he say Red Bull was the benchmark?

Because this is Mercedes that everyone

pretty much since Barcelona said were clear favourists in front. George Russell, favourite for the

World Championship. Lance Strullard told us on Monday that when George Russell wins the Australian

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