By Alan Baldwin
Jan 16 (Reuters) - Red Bull are hopeful four-times world champion Max Verstappen will have a good enough engine behind him to get back in front as Formula One enters a new era.
The Dutch driver lost the title to McLaren's Lando Norris last season and returns with Ford-backed Red Bull producing their own power unit for the first time and the sport facing its biggest technical overhaul in decades.
While ex-partners Honda have joined Aston Martin, Red Bull are taking on Ferrari and Mercedes
as constructors of both chassis and engine.
There has been plenty of speculation about how competitive an engine Verstappen will have but Red Bull Ford Powertrains boss Ben Hodgkinson played down some of that concern ahead of Friday's livery launch in Detroit.
"Everything I do has got to be backed up by the belief I can do it," the former Mercedes man told British reporters when asked if he could give Verstappen what he needed.
"I don't think you belong in this industry if you don't believe that. So it's clearly the target.
"But I think if you show me a confident engineer, I'll show you one that's about to lose. You can never underestimate where everybody is. You always have to assume you're behind so that you always push to the absolute maximum.
"Look, it's going to be an interesting season."
Hodgkinson was confident Red Bull had an incredible team of people, many hired from Mercedes, and the Milton Keynes factory was a benchmark.
That said, Red Bull remained engine newcomers and had to build facilities while rivals could focus purely on producing a powertrain.
"I think we started behind but I think the people and the facilities we've got are better than everybody else," said Hodgkinson, who spent 20 years at Mercedes before joining Red Bull four years ago.
"So watch this space. Will I have overtaken them by race one? I don't know."
Mercedes started the last engine era in 2014 with a dominant power unit and racked up a record eight constructors' titles in succession.
There has been talk of them again having an advantage but Hodgkinson suggested last year's runners-up, who have made overtures to Verstappen, had started that conversation at a time when their car was not performing.
"My gran used to say an empty can rattles the loudest," he said. "So I just want to get my head down and get on with it and we'll let the results do the talking."
The rumour mill has also suggested Mercedes and Red Bull, third last year, may have exploited a loophole in the new engine regulations through the thermal expansion of components to gain more power than Ferrari and Honda.
Hodgkinson said the regulations were "super, super clear" and any F1 engineer who did not understand thermal expansion did not belong in the sport.
"There's a list of what you're allowed to do. So I don't really understand why everyone's so up in arms about it," he said.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
