Simple queries to Redshift really slow
The whole idea around Redshift is not to run in a single node. It is actually designed to run in a sharded cluster and it is expected to have very bad numbers within only one node. If you look at the internals you'll see that is actually designed to run on top of a set of nodes, adding an extra layer for the query processing. 

If you are already familiar with the basics, you can check the Best practices.