F1 pundit Ted Kravitz has run the rule over Mercedes and co ahead of this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, and he offered a rather ominous view for Red Bull's title rivals.
Last season Red Bull dominated the driver's and constructor's championship with Max Verstappen storming to his second world title by taking 15 Grand Prix victories. Pre-season testing had a familiar feel with Christian Horner's team posting the fastest lap time on the third day.
Sky Sports pundit Kravitz predicts that Red Bull have again got the quickest car on the grid ahead of the season opener and have fixed the problems which gave Ferrari an early advantage last season.
"The only reason they weren't dominating qualifying in the way Ferrari perhaps did early on last year was because their car was overweight," Kravitz told Sky Sports. "That's not an issue that they have (this year)."
Ferrari finished second in the driver's championship last season with Charles Leclerc taking three race wins and 11 podium finishes. However, he finished a huge 104 points behind runaway winner Verstappen in the overall driver's standings.
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"They've got a lot of work to do to be quick in either qualifying and the race," added Kravitz believing that they will again finish runner-up to Red Bull. "At the moment both of those have been somewhat dominated by Red Bull."
Kravitz believes that Aston Martin provided the surprise in testing and rated them in third - ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.
"I've got them third and potentially even closer to Ferrari than that," added Kravitz.
"That's to do with Fernando Alonso's race run. Aston Martin have Red Bull worried from day one, Adrian Newey (engineer) mentioned them in the teams that he's concerned about. The car is essentially good and has some nice ideas."
Mercedes had problems in testing with George Russell's car suffering a hydraulics failure - forcing him to miss valuable testing time. Mechanics also needed to use tape as a quick fix for Hamilton's car after a piece of carbon flew off during testing.
Kravitz rated the team as fourth fastest and said they have work to do ahead of this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix.
"We need to see a big step in the next few days for Mercedes to be solidly in third," he added. "They are still playing catch-up and suffering from what they had last year.
Alpine finished fourth in the constructor's championship last season and with Aston Martin predicted to move up Kravitz has them as fifth fastest this term.
"Then we have the enigma of Alpine, he added. "On their day they could solidly fifth, but they could slip down easily. What they do have are two closely matched drivers (Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon), they've never been separated by more than half-a-second. As long as that works constructively I think they'll solidly be in fifth."
