Red Bull: Thing of beauty Honda F1 engine gave us best installation

The team has viewed its switch to the Japanese manufacturer's engines as a long-term project to bring it back into title-winning contention.

But after an encouraging opening day of pre-season testing at Barcelona in which Max Verstappen completed 128 laps and set the fourth-fastest time, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was full of praise for the new power unit.

"Power is a dominating factor, but I have to say that the installation of this engine into the chassis is probably the best one we have ever had," said Horner.

"When you look how neatly integrated it is into the chassis, it really is a thing of beauty.

"The whole engineering team collectively with Honda have done a great job in terms of installing what looks like a Swiss clock into the back of our chassis."

Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost, whose outfit is also supplied by Honda, said earlier on Monday he had no doubts that the sister Red Bull team will win races this year.

Asked by Autosport if he shared Tost's optimism, Horner said: "It's great to have that enthusiasm and optimism that Franz has shown.

"We're excited to be working with Honda in what is a true partnership, as opposed to a customer-supplier relationship. And we're really already feeling the benefits of that.

"It's not going to be a fast process, there's no silver bullet, and I think as the organisations learn more about each other and their strengths and relative weaknesses, it's something that will grow over a period of time.

"But we're not actually putting any timescale on that."

Horner added that Honda's state of readiness for its pre-season testing programme was also more advanced than his outfit had experienced with Renault in recent years.

"We already saw from Toro Rosso last year that great progress was made, and of course our decision was based on what we could see and measure," said Horner.

"And I have to say so far, we've been very impressed with everything we've seen.

"It's the first time in 12 years that our factory's had four complete engines in it. That's not happened before."